Wake me up when the baby's done drying

When the kids were little, hubby and I worked opposite shifts a lot. He was in nursing school, as well as working part time at the hospital. I worked 12 hour weekend shifts so I could be home during the week. Hubby was pulling a lot of all nighters, studying and writing care plans for school. We were both exhausted all the time.

Having two toddlers who were only a year apart will suck out your brain cells on a good day, but add nursing school to it, and we were both nuts. The youngest didn't understand the concept of sleep at all. The oldest was a good sleeper -- but then again, there was the night that we found him in the living room, shouting out responses to Dick Clark on $100,000 Pyramid at 2am. We worshipped at the altar of sleep, and would grab it whenever we could.

I was working in the Special Care Nursery at the hospital, and would get off work at 7pm on Saturdays and Sundays. I walked into our apartment one night after work and immediately tried to assess the wreckage: hubby was fully reclined in the La-Z-Boy, snoring. Looking at him, I tried to figure out what in the world he'd been doing, because he had these weird black lines on his face and all over the sleeves of his new IU School of Nursing sweatshirt. Kinda like a sleeping Braveheart.

Off I went to find the kids, and immediately see the oldest, two years old, walking down the hall toward me. "Hi Mommy," says he, in that little baby voice that makes a mommy melt. "Where's your sister?" No response, but I hear this weird noise next to me, in the little utility closet where the washer and dryer were. Over he walks, opens the dryer door, and out pops his baby sister. "Hi Mommy!" she says.

Yep. He had put her in the dryer.

I walked in and whacked hubby on the leg. He promptly woke up saying "I wasn't asleep, I wasn't asleep." Right.

So, I asked him what his racing stripes are all about, and he had no idea--didn't even know that they were there. We went upstairs to change clothes, and found that the kids had emptied the laundry basket, flipped it upside down, then used it as a stepstool, and climbed up on the counter. They then apparently proceeded to ransack my makeup bag, dumping out a container of foundation all over the counter, then took my mascara wand downstairs and painted Daddy with it.

Yep, honey, you weren't asleep.