I went from sleeping to sitting bolt upright in bed with a shout that I”ll not repeat in print. I looked over at John who had been startled into the same position, our eyes met, we both groaned, got out of bed and followed the noise of little feet.

It takes much less than a giant clap of thunder to pull Clara into our bed and we hadn’t made it to the bottom of the stairs before she passed us at a run and was burrowing under our covers.  I checked on Ivy, who wasn’t even wakened by the rain coming into her room, and listened to John and Jane try to come to an agreement on going back to sleep in between the rumbles as I checked the rest of the windows. Jane has never been the snuggling type but the storm was right on top of us and they headed down to our room. Soon windows were closed against the rain, the air was getting thick and hot, and I went to climb into my considerably smaller portion of the bed to fall back asleep…

Then, there was more thunder.

And more lightening

And quaking girls.

And little girls hiding under the covers.

And little girls playing peek-a-boo.

And little girls giggling.

And hot.

And stuffy.

And crowded.

And one grumpy Dad leaving to find a different bed.

And a sad, Jane following him.

And a sad, small girl coming back.

And a sad, small girl wanting to sleep on the couch…

… on her bed…

… on our bed…

…on the floor…

… by her sister…

…by her other sister…

…by Dad…

…by Mom…

… with a cat…

While the other happy, small girl continued to gleefully snuggle into my spot in my bed.

Hours went by.

I’m sure that there are proper ways to parent a two year old who is roaming the house during a thunderstorm that involve something more than following them about wishing that this will be the spot they want to sleep. Something more than wishing with all your exhausted body’s might that this time they will actually want to cuddle, so that when the next flash of lightning comes they don’t come looking for you even though they very clearly just told you to “Go away!” Some ingenious parenting technique that calms the two year old enough to lay down with a parent and at least attempt to sleep.

I’m sure there is a proper way to do it.

At four in the morning I can’t figure it out.

The following day after five hours of broken sleep the idea eludes me.

In fact I still have absolutely no idea what to do.

But with more thunderstorms in the forecast I’m afraid I’m going to get a chance to figure it out.

After all, you know what they say, practice makes perfect.

We got up around 3:30 with the first big boom, and I thought, “Dang, I can’t even use this for the One Day One World Project.” Be careful what you wish for. Before we were all back asleep I had my (admittedly poor but cut me some slack I’d only had two hours of sleep at this point) picture. Check out Northwest Frame of Mind  and see what other people were doing between five and six am.