“I want to be a princess when I get big,” Edie says with her mind made up.

“A princess?  Really?”  I’ve never liked how little girls (particularly mine) are inundated with all the princess stuff these days, but it’s pretty much impossible to escape.  “Why a princess?”

“Because they get to wear pretty dresses.”

“You’re right they do, but I’m not sure princess is a good goal for you.”  Even though I’ve always told her that she can be anything she wants to be, I’m really thinking we’ve got to nip this princess thing in the bud, and now is as good a time as any to start.

“Are princesses real or pretend?”

“Well, there are real princesses in the world, but American little girls don’t really grow up to be real princesses.  That’s really in other countries.”

“But I could be one, right?”

“Not really, honey, and besides wouldn’t you rather grow up to be maybe a teacher, or a mommy, or a doctor?  Those are all good things to be.”

“Nah, they have too work to hard.”

Well, she got’s me there.

So the next morning, after I’d just pulled myself out of the bed and shuffled into the kitchen, barely awake, Edie stands in the doorway bright eyed. “Mommy, I was thinking about it last night, and I’ve decided that I don’t want to be a princess when I grow up…instead, I want to be an artist.”

I thought to myself, “Well, that’s a little better than princess.”

“What made you decide that?”

“I was thinking about princesses, and well…princesses have to clean up  after everybody ALOT.”

I thought, “Well, then mark being a mommy off your list as well.”

I am in a GREAT mood today.  I mean, really good…like Snow White met me in the mirror this morning with birds singing on my shoulder kind of good.  There are several factors responsible for this mood, but probably most important is that I actually slept for seven hours last night…seven hours IN A ROW.

I forget how sleep deprived I am until the rare occasions when I get a good night’s sleep.  I then spend the next day with a pep in my step and humming show tunes because I feel so good and have a new found energy.

I love my babies, more than life itself, but they rob me of sleep.   At least once a night, I’ll hear Roark whimpering because of a lost paci and have to scurry out of bed to replace it before his whimper turns into a full on fit.  And then later I’ll be woken up by a knock at the door and the announcement that someone, who will remain nameless, has wet the bed (and no, I’m not talking about Ken).  Throw into the mix a cat that insists on knocking over all of the stuff on my nightstand and the fact that I have a bladder the size of a peanut, and well, I average about five hours of actual sleep a night.

So this morning when I rolled over and saw that it was 6:30, I couldn’t believe that I had been in the bed the entire night and not woken up once.   What an amazing feeling to be rested and want to get out of bed.  I’m sure it was a fluke and won’t happen again for a very long time, but Edie enjoyed the spectacle this morning as she watched me dance around the kitchen while making toast for everybody.  I know it was a nice change from the bleary-eyed ogre that  normally greets her in the mornings grunting and muttering incoherently, and unfortunately will probably be back tomorrow.