You know what's great

waking up, not sure if its early in the morning or late at night, and looking down and seeing your baby's head lying on your stomach, your eldest's head on your thighs, and your middle's head on a pillow yet still somehow touching your eldest's head.

Your eyes adjust to the dark with the aid of the light coming from the TV showing the menu page of Scooby Doo, Where Are You? Season three. How do you know it's season three? Because for some unknown reason they changed the classic theme song, not that season three's song isn't catchy 'cause it is but it's...it's just not the original.

You see your three babies and think even if you had had the where with all to pray for something other than a healthy baby, you never could have prayed for three babies this terrific, this awesome, this beautiful, this intelligent, this great. You take a moment to thank God for not giving you what you ask for, but what you needed.

Wanting the ability to move your lower body once again, you decide to wake your oldest, ask him to turn off the TV and DVD, while you reposition the other two. He wakes up groggy, but understands the task asked of him, until you add another request that he also close the bedroom door. And suddenly you enter into the twilight zone.

"I want you, Mommy," he says to you sounding sad and pitiful.

And just like that the moments of bliss you had been experiencing die.

A few months ago, Jory said that phrase when he was ill. If he had a different sort of mother, my heart strings would tug whenever he said it. But he doesn't and this mother, who has been known to be cynical at times, sees through his words and recognizes what they really mean. "I want you, Mommy," means I've softened you up with these words and my sad look so don't ask me to do whatever you're asking me to do. Let me sit next to you until you forget whatever you were asking me. "I want you, Mommy," spread faster than that disease that killed everyone in The Stand . Rowan says it. Layla says it though her version has two meanings. One version means the same as her brother's and sister's. And the other version means stop whatever you're doing mommy, pick me, hold me, walk me around, and do my bidding. How could one phrase have such nefarious meanings?

So you take a breath, look at your son, and say, "Close the door so we can go back to sleep."

And grudgingly he walks those four steps to the door and closes it. It crosses your mind to ask him, if he's having a good attitude and doing the task without grumbling or complaining, but you're tired and you just want him to get in bed, fall back asleep, so you can get back to the place where you can say...you know what's great.