There ought to be a rule...

...Occurs to me at 3:30 am, whilst I lay on my brand new mattress cushion and fancy sheets, specifically purchased to give me the best night's sleep EVER...that there ought to be a rule. There ought to be a rule that Moms and Dads are off-duty after 8 pm. Even the hardest workers usually limit themselves to 12 hour shifts (unless you are Nicholas Cage in The Family Man, and he had issues. Hence, the movie.) First addendum to the rule: Pooping should be restricted to daylight hours. Why any reasonable child would hold it all day and promise that he was fine, in spite of indications to the contrary, is beyond me. We have a very nice ocean-themed bathroom and umpteen opportunities to use it. It's not as if he has to wade through the wind and snow to some outhouse in the back. But no, obvious benefits of using the bathroom in daylight and having an undisturbed sleep notwithstanding, he is up at 12:30 am...pooping. And so, Mommy and Daddy have been woken up too. Second addendum to the rule: Children should only need medical treatment during daylight hours. Granted, my second child DID recently have surgery and the doctor DID say that coughing would cause soreness and pain for another two weeks...I'm not cold-hearted...3:30 am just feels REALLY early, especially when you aren't sleeping well otherwise. This leads to Addendum #3 (which kind of excuses and supersedes the others): Children should AT LEAST wait until they are born to disturb Mommy's sleep. The other disturbances wouldn't be so bad if baby girl wasn't sending me to the bathroom every hour, giving me heartburn or doing gymnastics. Let's say the glass is half full and she is considerately preparing me for her arrival. I respond, how about Mommy gets a restful third trimester to store up her energy? Wouldn't that be good for everyone? Like a hibernating polar bear, preparing to be the best seal catcher it can be...(wow, that's a little violent. That's what sleep deprivation does to your proper analogy-making skills.) This leads to Addendum #4: it's now 4 am, and I am thinking about blogging. This does not help me sleep, thinking about witty ways to recount the night's events, because for some reason, my Mom thinks my stories are funny. She thinks I'm the next Erma Bombeck. Ah, a mother's rose-colored glasses, if ever there were a case. I don't even know who Erma Bombeck is. Poor lady. But I can see the coroner's report now: Death due to natural causes. Exacerbated by: sleep deprivation. Contributing factors: Children and blogging. Back to my original thought. There ought to be a rule. Mommy should be off-duty at night. Right? Sigh...would I enforce it, if I could? No, probably not. It's 4:30 am. I need to go to the bathroom.