This Is How It Happens: A play-by-play look at the anatomy of a night in the little yellow house

4:33am: Jacob finishes the yogurt I have been feeding him in bed while we both sit cross-legged, knees touching, on our new bamboo sheets (my first new sheets since I was 17 and picked out extra-long ones designated for college dorm beds in what I called 'sunset' colors) which are the softest thing ever. As we recline into the horizontal position, he tells this story: "Edytime me and Bob are at work, we get soda and Red Bull and drink it!" We settle into a snuggle, his legs between my knees, head on the shoulder of my left arm which is wrapped around his energized body.

4:47: Jacob talks about Ginger, as coming home from the vet's is the last thing he remembers before falling asleep in the car at 7pm.

4:48: Jacob is messing with the covers, kicking them off. My blood pressure sky-rockets.

4:53: "Daddy, can we sway?" At last I will have five minutes in which to fall asleep before the child begins thrashing in bed again. I turn toward the wall, but there is the clock. It is daring me to drift off before it's flourescent numbers change. Alas, the challenge proves too difficult for me.

4:57: I want to wash my hands, they feel grimy. I realize Jacob's hands are probably disgusting. I didn't wash them before we left the vet's because I was there alone with him and both dogs. I'm thinking about how I can smell the overly sweet scent of the yogurt remnants in the bowl on the bedside table. This reminds me that my notebook is underneath; from this point on I know it's only a matter of time before I go for it.

4:59: Jacob wants to get back into bed. I re-spread the doubled towel because it would be too ironic that Jacob wets through his diaper on this, the first night of our new sheets. "You can snuggle with me now, Mommy," he says as if he is presenting me with a gift. In fact, it is a gift because at this point in his life Jacob much prefers the arms of Zach. The truth is, he is safer there at night; at rest in the elbow crook of someone whose atoms aren't spinning a thousand miles per second. I know this is my last chance to reach for the notebook, and so I do, holding off the my son, who lays there with eyes open until my arms are ready to envelope him once again.

What is the nature of this 'falling asleep'? It is an active or passive process? Does sleep grab a hold of you when you are ready, or is it something that comes by only at random intervals and it is up to you to grab a hold of it? Why is it so elusive?

5:03: My hand is cramping up from holding down the tiny button on Zach's running watch to give me just enough light to write something I will hopefully be able to make out later. I put the watch down, and proceed to write while laying down, in the dark.

5:04: "Mommy is crazy," Jacob mumbles to the sleep Gods, as if to say, take pity on me and let me sleep already, for you see, I had no chance from the beginning.

5:07: It was a dumb idea to get the notebook out. Even though the process was bound to wake me more, I thought if I could just clear my head, then I was be more readied for sleep. I give up on writing. I still want to wash my hands, but Jacob is there, so my arms recieve him. He's 'petting' my face with both of his open palms. All I can think about is how Jacob originally woke up in a coughing fit, which he covered with his hands, and all the germ-infested stuff he touched at the vet's. It is alternately the most beautiful and the most repulsive act I've ever experienced.

5:22: I'm not sure what's been happening the last 20 minutes, but I can't say I haven't been in and out of sleep. Jacob is asking for juice. This time Zach seems to be more awake so he goes to get it. Jacob follows him and I quickly anticipate what will happen once downstairs. "Zach...no v-i-d-e-o-s!" He disagrees with this and argues that Jacob is up for good. "He fell asleep at 7pm, and woke up at 4:20. That's 9+ hours of sleep. He's up."

He's right. And even though I'm not the one downstairs with Jacob, Zach's sudden martyr complex has got me all worked up. So here I am typing away; the computer was all too conveniently stashed under the bedside table. I couldn't sleep anyway because Jacob is chattering away at a volume that won't be appropriate until at least the sun rises.

I tried to explain it to a mom at work today when I went in to get my paycheck, how it is that Jacob was up to see the passing of 2006. She couldn't believe it, and at the time I couldn't quite come up with a reasonable explanation. But now that I am here, living it again, it is all very simple. Jacob is hard to get to sleep (from me) and hard to wake up (from Zach). He will take a nap later this morning, early enough that he will still go to bed sometime before 10pm. He will wake up the next morning just late enough that a reasonable nap time will be out of the question, but just a little too early to make it through the day without falling asleep at 5pm. He will nap for at least two hours because we won't be able to wake him, and then at 7pm will be raring to go for another 5 or 6 hours. Alas, the 1am (or later) bedtime. We'll have a few crazy nights like that, then the cycle will start all over again with the one day he falls asleep at 7pm and we get just a couple hours to ourselves.

So for now, Jacob is downstairs, stoked to be up with Daddy - a daddy who is not happy to be awake. He's doing normal things, but his parents, in their bleary-eyed, sleep-walking are not capable of appreciating his cuteness. I am the one in bed still because I have gotten 1.4 hours of sleep, 5 hours less than Zach. And I still want to wash my hands.