It’s been a while since I’ve had a full, uninterrupted night’s sleep.  A year ago our youngest son was diagnosed with Juvenile Diabetes and since then, I pad to his room at 2:00 AM every morning to make sure he’s not running ‘low’ or ‘high.’  In whatever broken sleep I do enjoy, though, I dream.  It’s always been a fascinating mystery to me, how the quickly the subconscious can work so fast to wrap a dream around a sound.

"Mommy, how do you count by 'illions,' is it a million, a billion, a trillion...what comes after a trillion?"

"Hmmm," mommy draws a blank.  "Daddy, what does come after a trillion?"

Daddy doesn't even look up from his paper, "a trillion and one."

Grrrrr.

We're on our way to run errands when I take a swig of my bottled water.  From the back-seat a child's voice issues this warning:

"MOM!!!  Don't drink when you're driving!!!"

"It's just water, Chris.  I'm not even on the main road yet."

"MOM!!!  If you drink and drive you're going to be pulled over by the POLICE and have to do EXercises on the side of the ROAD and they're going to show you on T.V. with your FACE scribbled out and then you'll go to JAIL!!!"

One sip of Evian and I'm barreling straight down the slippery slope that leads to Stony Lonesome.

Last night I walked into the boys' room just as Alex was saying to Chris, "Chris, I'm not going to let you grow up to be that way!"

"What are you guys talking about?"  I asked.

Chris looked up at me with his I've-made-up-my-mind-and-there's-nothing-you-can-say-to-change-it look and clamped his lips together making it clear he was not going to give it up without a crow-bar or a sugar bribe.