When 6 Kids is Too Many Kids

I went to the store with Ruth and Kate last night just after I had put the younger kids to bed. We only needed one thing, but I thought it would be fun to look at the Christmas stuff. We walked over to the Christmas section and while Ruth and Kate were admiring all of the delicate, shiny ornaments, a red shiny bag of peanut m&m's caught my eye. Those m&m's called me over and before I had the will to resist, the m&m's were in my car driving home with me. I put Ruth and Kate to bed, and then went to my bed with my lovely book and my shiney red bag of peanut m&m's. After some time John came in, laid down next to me and said,"Are those peanut m&m's you are not sharing?" So I shared, and when John finished working we put on a netflix animae disc, "Black Cat." It is a "not for young children" Japanese cartoon series that we enjoy. Each episode is about a half hour. We watched one episode and we wanted to watch another, but we decided to be responsible and go to bed because at that point it was midnight. Well, we went to bed and about 20 minutes later the cat was jumping on us, my bedside table, and in the bathroom sink. We knew that cat must need water, so I got up, got the cat, took him out to the garage, got his water bowl, brought the bowl inside and filled it up, then I brought the water back out to the garage, came in, and locked the door. I went right back to bed, but I could not sleep because of those mean old m&m's (John had the same problem.). I think I did fall alseep around 1:30am. At 3am, the baby started crying, and one of the older kids went into the bathroom and did not sound happy. John went downstairs to take care of Anya, and I went to the bathroom. It was Adam in the bahroom trying to peel off soaking wet pajamas. I helped Adam out of his pajamas, onto the toilet and then into the bathtub. I then went into his room and stripped down his bed, washed off the plastic cover, put on a clean sheet and pillow case and then I put on the only two blankets we had left unused upstairs. At this point John had come back from settling Anya down and was bathing Adam. I got Adam some clean pajamas, and then I helped John dry Adam off and get him into his pajamas. Adam was shivering pretty hard, so John went downstairs and got him the big quilt fromoff the TV couch. We finally had Adam settled back down and warm so we went to bed. By this time the m&m's were no longer bothering me so I went right to sleep, only to be woken up by Rachel crying at 4am. I took care of Rachel, and went back to sleep. Then at 5am Johnny came into our bedroom. I was actually dreaming that my kids had the stomach flu, and so when I heard Johnny, I thought he was there to tell me that he was sick. I yelled, "get to bathroom, quick." Johnny then jumped up on me. That scared me, so I jumped out of bed and ran out of my bedroom screaming. (I don't normally do that.) Well, that woke John up and he asked what was wrong. Johnny said, "I only had a nightmare." I asked him if he felt sick and he said no. So we sent Johnny to the bathroom and to say his prayers. Then John decided to put on the audio scriptures stories to help Johnny get back to sleep in his own bed. The batteries were dead in the cd player so he fumbled in the dark for a charged battery near the battery recharger. He found a charged one on the third try, got the stories started, tucked Johnny back into bed and then came back to bed. At 6:56am, I heard Ruth and Kate's alarm clock and knew that it was time to get up and get the kids ready for school. I think that I was more tired when I woke up, then when I went to bed, and I thought, "we should have been irresponsible and watched the rest of the black cat disc like we wanted to. I don't think I would have felt less tired right now."