Last night, to put it mildly, sucked.

And this is an awful picture, but it was a cute moment with my Meggie so I wanted to put it up. Meghan has contracted the upper respiratory, Ebola-type virus that Erin had last weekend and was up from midnight until at least 2 am with a spiking fever and horrible cough. Then Erin starts yelling in her sleep things like, "I'm STARVING!!!" and that lasted for an hour or so. All the while, Lizzy is up sporadically screaming and crying and having nothing in particular wrong with her, at least to the naked, exhausted eye. As luck would have it, the tomatoes and Italian sausage I fed her for dinner were causing some gastrointestinal distress. Go figure! I thought all 15 month olds with a history of intestinal issues would truly dig on such a feast. I honestly don't know how my kids have survived this long as my offspring. I am nothing more than a feeble-minded fool, blundering my way through most things. Anyway, she finally settled down by 3 am after eliminating a most unpleasant bowel movement. When I finally got in there and got her changed, she stopped crying and (I am not kidding) smiled and said, "Happy. Happy. Happy." Like, "Thank you for finally getting in here and getting this acidic paste off my ass since you fed me stuff I wasn't supposed to eat in a blatant effort to poison me." So to recap, Pete and I didn't go to bed until after 10 pm and then were up from 12-3 am and then up again for good at 6:30 am.

Good God...I am so tired.

The night before was no picnic either. And while the night before that was continuous, uninterrupted sleeping bliss, the night before that one was hell. This sleeping vs. not sleeping thing with my kids is what is keeping me from wanting to have another baby. I still revisit the issue every now and again, hearing my biological clock faintly ticking, ticking, ticking...but then I think of the agony of nighttime with all these kids and realize that I will never have it in me to voluntarily, purposefully go down this road again. Not to mention the fact that I have enough to keep up with, and up until this week, I haven't been doing the most bang up job as a mom.

But...my efforts toward diving head-first into my kids and their needs are reaping enormous rewards so far. Everyone has their needs not only met, but exceeded, and I have suddenly gotten back into anticipating what is going to happen before it actually happens. Like before anyone bitches that they're thirsty, here I come like a Fairy Godmother with drink in hand. I have telepathic abilities. And I like it. So the whining is down to a bare minimum, and while germs are flying all around, I have it under control. The house is pulled together. The bathrooms are clean. Clothes are put away. And the beds, all of them, have been made every day this week.

I think that this is a MAJOR accomplishment...considering the fact that I have allowed myself to live in a fog of under-achievement and have accepted this feeling of overwhelming burden as fact and not fiction up until last weekend. It is fiction. I can handle this. I am good at this. And all I had to do was stop looking for distractions, (i.e., the Internet, email, FB, IM, etc. on a constant basis) and pay attention to what was right in front of me.

The epiphany as of late is this: the reason I can't figure out what I want to be besides a "Mommy"/"Wifey" (as Pete calls me, in addition to "Babe") is that there is nothing else. I have everything that I want right within the walls of my home...and four lives human and one life dog needing me to be here, 110%, every single day. So once you figure out that you have everything you could've ever wanted, you want to take advantage of having recognized a dream come true...and then live in it as wholly as possible.

So that's where I am...right here. It became pretty clear to me that my priorities have been sadly misaligned when Erin and I had the following conversation the other day:
Erin: Mommy, your computer isn't on.
Mommy: I know. I don't need it on right now.
Erin: That's really good. Because you have a lot of people who need you here.

If that isn't a wake-up call, then I don't know what is.

I recently said I'd save my laptop in the event of a fire. I would now alter that position to say that if it were packed in a bag that happened to be sitting by the door through which I was exiting, I might grab it. Otherwise, I'm counting up family members and making a run for...because they are the ones who need me.