When I was born, my mom made me a 2-sided flannel blanket that I lovingly referred to as Woobie as I was growing up… and all through college… and after I was married. My NEED for the blanket diminished with time but it was still nice to have around. I used it as a blindfold when my room wasn’t dark enough. I kept it in a drawer beside my bed in case I was sad one night and needed an old friend. Woobie was always there for me until the last few shreds of fabric had disintegrated and there was nothing left to grab onto.

Years later, a mother myself, I was going through the hardest period of my adult life when I called my mom one day crying and asked her to make me a new Woobie. She made it and FedExed it and I received it with the next day’s mail. It was so comforting to me and now when I go away overnight, I leave it with Dan so he won’t get lonely.

Well, I’m not the only one to receive one or two of these flannel blankies from my mama. She’s also made one for each of the grandkids. They work great as swaddlers when they’re young but as Laylee got older, the blanket’s appeal for her waned. Magoo is a different story all together.

Remember when I was all, "My baby! She sleeps through the night! Should I tempt the universe and move her into her brother's room?" That was almost FOUR MONTHS ago people. And guess who is still sleeping in the closet?

Once we convinced her that midnight was not an appropriate baby bedtime, the ten- and eleven-hour stretches of sleep vanished. I didn't mind at first, because I now had my evenings to myself (and, oh yeah, time to talk to that guy I live with) and a baby who wakes up during the night is at least a COMMON complaint. But at seven months our girl is still waking up multiple times a night and it's getting a little old. We burp and feed and rock and soothe, and a few times we even attempted that Cry It Out thing. Which didn't work because 1) we are softies and 2) she's in our CLOSET. That's awfully close quarters when someone is bawling for an unspecified yet undoubtedly long stretch of time.

Keeping her in the closet is making me so nuts that over the weekend I informed Phillip we were moving Molly into Jack's room. "That's the plan all along, right?" I huffed, daring him to challenge me. "It's not like we're getting any sleep NOW."

In the first decade of our marriage, my journalist husband traveled a lot. Sometimes he was gone for weeks at a time and usually for enviable reasons like Olympic games and Wimbledon matches. I used those long absences to do things I didn't do when he was home -- like eat cereal for dinner and spend Friday nights after work in the Y hot tub.

And while the missing him could get bad, I mostly enjoyed the freedom, reading late into the night and hogging the bed.

My husband rarely travels for work anymore, a blessed fact considering we have a 5-year-old who badly misses her father when he is gone. This week though, Daddy hasn't been home for a few days. The only benefit Maria sees in this is that she gets to sleep in the big bed with me.

"Whenever Daddy is not here, I get to sleep with you, right?'' she said when he left.

There is no option to say no.

An average night in the Cheung household looks kind of like this:

7pm: Phillip puts Molly to bed.

7:30pm: Maggie puts Jack to bed. Unless Maggie wants to blog, or cook dinner, or shop online, or talk on the phone, or eat bon bons, or paint her toenails and then Phillip puts Jack to bed.

8pm - 11pm: Phillip and Maggie eat dinner, watch TV and camp out in front of their respective laptops. If Molly wakes up and wants to eat, Phillip will give her a bottle. Phillip is still on Molly Duty even though she now reliably takes a bottle and the, uh, nursing station is officially shut down.

Coordinated naps, I've come to realize, are the Holy Grail of parenting two or more children. Each day is spent in a calculated quest for an hour to myself in the afternoon and my whole day is structured around that sacred chunk of time.