Slept like a baby.

Oh.my.word.

Mix a skating party, real coke, and a 10 year old, and what do you get? A child who can't go to sleep until one o'clock in the morning, and a very tired and bitter mother.

Oh my goodness, I can't believe I made the critical error of thinking a little soda wouldn't hurt. I mean, it was a skating party, she was expending incredible amounts of energy breezing past the boys and swinging her blinking, illuminated pacifier as she passed. How much of that caffeinated hype could linger in her system past the drive home, I foolishly asked myself as I allowed her to purchase the coveted drink.

The answer I gave myself was apparently horribly wrong. All the caffeine in that tiny coke cup would course through those veins for the next 4 hours. Four hours of my life that could have been far better spent doing laundry or cleaning, or, oh, I don't know, maybe sleeping! Instead I was reassuring my dramatic and now hyped - up daughter that the 30 mph gusts rattling the wreaths against her windows were not, in fact, ghosts or robbers. Sidenote... between the caffeine, the tacky blinking pacifiers, and the talk of ghosts I am seriously beginning to doubt my mothering skills. I mean it sounds as if I have been swapping parenting tips with Britney Spears, for pete's sake!

Anyway, after much prayer and deep theological discussion about God's protection and the fact that there are no such thing as ghosts, and also, for good measure, a reminder that I was in fact STILL AWAKE and how could anything possibly get past me to her, I conceeded defeat and climbed into her loft bed for a torturous hour of "sleep". When her snores convinced me she was finally out for the count, I staggered back to my own bed where I was happy to note that all our nighttime drama had escaped my husband who was sleeping peacefully, unaware that the dog was perched on his head.