Oh, what a night.

Every time that hubby leaves town, something weird happens. Last time, I got food poisoning. It was my own fault - I ate Chinese food leftovers that had been sitting in the car for two hours like it was the only food left on earth. It was delicious. But I was up every two hours that night with the runs.

Last night was a little unusual too. It started normally. Baby down at 7pm. Toddler down by 8pm. Me and my exhausted self in bed by 9:30pm. Toddler cries at 11pm. She's not really awake, but I go in and put her blanket on her and her lovey bear on her face. I sneak out without waking the baby. Toddler cries again at 12:30am. Again, she's not really awake, but she's upside down in her bed so I flip her around and put blankets on her. But she's cried louder this time, so the baby wakes up. I nurse the baby reluctantly and then she goes back down without a peep. Ah, I think to myself. Now I can get a nice little stretch of sleep if only the baby would sleep until the morning.

4am. There's incessant high-pitched barking from downstairs. I quickly burst out of bed and run downstairs cursing the dog the whole time. I let her out of her bag and she's beelining for the door. She only does this when she's really gotta go. So I'm walking her at 4am, without my glasses on, hoping that there are no weirdos on the street. We go maybe two houses down and the dog is squatting every two feet, trying to get whatever-it-is out of her system. I'm pulling her leash, cursing her the whole time, and we come back inside. She runs to the wee-wee pad and continues her business, misses, which means I'm cleaning the floor now that it is nearly 4:30am. I curse the dog one final time and go back to bed.

5:30am. More incessant high-pitched barking. We do the drill again. I have again forgotten to put on my glasses in the midst of running downstairs, and I still have an eye mask on my face. I'm a groggy mess, but here I go again, pulling the dog out and watching her squat every two feet outside. We come back inside and she won't go back in the bag. I stick her in the car and figure she won't die for the hour and half it will be before the kids wake up.

But I look on the monitor and the baby is already awake. She's on her tummy, cooing. I go in and nurse her and she smiles and wants to play with me by grabbing my nose while nursing. When she's done I try to put her back down but she won't have it. I don't want the toddler to wake up, so I take her back to my room with me, and we lie in bed together, me with my eyes half closed and her grabbing my face and hair. We eventually fall asleep for a little bit, and I actually enjoy this sweet snuggle time. Since hubby's not here, that means a little more bed for each of us to sprawl out. The baby is sprawled out with both arms out, and I'm huddled on the edge of the bed. Even without him here, she's still taking up most of the bed. I put pillows on both sides of her so that she hopefully will not roll off when she wakes.

7am. I hear the toddler crying. "I want baby Cara!" she cries. "I really, REALLY want her!" "She's sleeping," I say, and I snuggle with her in her little toddler bed for a few minutes. This seems to suffice for now and we go downstairs for breakfast. I go up to move the baby to the crib, but she's sleeping so beautifully that I can't bear to move her. I give a bottle of lotion to the toddler to play with and run out to the car to get the dog, who is not dead. I walk her a bit and she's still squatting and this time she's pretty much almost done. But she has rubbed her bottom on the sidewalk and there is dirt and poop all over her fur. I don't want that on my carpet, so when we get inside, I throw her in the bathtub and give her a bath. My toddler has lotion all over her hair. We giggle about it.

I drop the kids off at daycare by 9am, and then sit in my very quiet house. It's quiet for a few minutes, until the construction on the fence between our house and our neighbor's house resumes. I take out my laptop to do some work. I'm editing something and then feel extremely drowsy, so I go up to bed, the construction sounds loud as ever. I fall asleep for three hours. I take a shower, fold the laundry, walk the dog, eat some leftovers, return some library books, and it is almost time to pick up the kids. I quickly edit a few more documents and call it a productive work day.

Now it's quiet in the house and I am watching on the monitor as the toddler runs back and forth putting stuffed animals into the sleeping baby's crib. Room sharing is failing for the most part. But it's still cute when they're actually both asleep. Even if we had a bigger house, I'm not sure I'd change anything. If only everybody would just stay asleep. Including the dog. End of Day 3.