2:32 a.m.

That's what time it all started. Actually it started sometime before that, but I don't know what time it was. At some point between going to sleep and 2:32 a.m., I heard the creaking of the boys' bedroom door and little feet going down the steps. I assumed it was a middle-of-the-night trip to the potty (remember - we only have one bathroom and it's downstairs and about two miles away). I must have fallen back to sleep. Then at 2:32 a.m. I awoke to the sound of life downstairs. Not voices, just noise - like someone was playing with toys. I rolled over to Ryan and asked, "Honey, did you hear that?" Apparently he had not, nor did he hear my question - he was still very much in dreamland. So I was on my own to confront the toy-playing mystery person by myself. I got up, walked out into the hallway, noticed that the door to the boys' bedroom was closed, but I could see light pouring out from under the door. Lots of light - all the lights in their room must have been on. But I knew that their room was not the source of the noise, so I ventured toward the steps. At this point, I noticed that, like their room, it was VERY bright downstairs. I started down the steps and heard that same "toy" noise - it sounded like someone was playing with something that had a lot of small pieces - like sorting through a bucket of LEGOS.

Back up for a second. We (the extended Keener clan) were all hanging out at Mom Keener's on Saturday evening for a lovely summer evening. Crissy and Steve had spotted an unopened Erector Set at a garage sale and bought it for Ben. This sort of toy (you know, the ones that include 40 gazillion tiny pieces and have instructions that children can look at and interpret with great ease but require intense concentration for the adults, so intense that we always walk away with a headache and a sore neck and we couldn't get it right anyway so why do we even bother...) is right up Ben's alley. He was very excited to get started, but we told him that he had to take apart the ENORMOUS roller coaster that he had constructed out of K'Nex before he could open the Erector Set box. So he spent a large portion of Sunday afternoon slaving away at the deconstruction of the roller coaster. He didn't quite finish before bedtime on Sunday evening, so Ryan had told him that as soon as he woke up the next morning, he could finish taking apart the roller coaster and then open his Erector Set. Unfortunately, to the detriment of my precious, precious sleep, Ryan did not specify what "as soon as he woke up" meant.

So we're back to o'dark thirty this morning. I turn the corner into the living room to see not one, but BOTH of my boys happily playing with Erector Set. Sure enough, the roller coaster was completely taken apart and the K'Nex box was closed. This is how the conversation went:

Me: Um, boys, it's the middle of the night. What ARE you doing?
Ben: We're playing with the Erector Set, Mom. (I guess an obvious question deserves an obvious answer).
Me: But it's 2:30 in the morning. You should be in bed.
Ben: But I'm not tired. Dad said I could work on this stuff when I woke up.
Drew: Yeah, we're not tired.
Me: But it's the middle of the night!
Ben: So? We're fine, Mom.

I pause, think about the situation, realize that it's not going to hurt anyone or anything if they continue to play. Then I notice that not only is the living room brightly illuminated, but that the ENTIRE downstairs is lit up like an operating room.

Me: Why are all the lights on?
Ben: I had to go to the back room to get Dad's screwdriver so I could get the batteries out of the guitar, and the guitar was in the toy room, so I had to turn on the lights in each room.

Sure enough, the dining room, kitchen, toy room, my office, laundry room and back storage room were all at full-watage lighting. I walked through and turned off the lights that were no longer needed and retreated upstairs back to my bed.

Ten minutes later, Drew comes upstairs whining "Mom! Mom! Ben was mean and ***! (insert some sort of tattle-tale story of which I do not remember the details because it was the 427th such story I had heard in the last 24 hours and I have begun to tune them out). I told him that if they could not get along, they would have to go to bed. He went back downstairs and all was well for about ten more minutes (or however long it took me to get so close to being asleep that the sound of my precious youngest's voice sent shivers down my spine) and Drew was whining and tattling again. Okay. That's it. They're done.

This is when Ryan woke up, when they were crying (loudly) on their march back to their bedrooms after I had informed them that their middle-of-the-night party was over. I filled him in on the happenings and he promptly fell back to sleep. Meanwhile, I'm tossing and turning when I heard a thud-thud from the boys' room. OH MY WORD!! What now?!?! Thinking that the sound may have been Drew falling out of bed, I scurry over to their room. I open the door, turn on the closet light and find that they are both in Drew's bed, giggling like the couple of goofballs that they are.

Me: What was that noise?
Ben: What, this? (thud-thud again)
Me: Yep, that's the one.
Ben: It's just me banging on the dresser.
Me: Okay, well, please be quiet and go to sleep.

I crawled back into bed (again) and continued to hear them talking and giggling. At some point, I feel asleep and they undoubtedly did as well. You would think with a night like that they would have slept in this morning. Nope. They were both up before 7 a.m.

True story.