Feeling: sleepy
Listening to: Sense Field - Memory
Reading/Watching: nothing

Something is ringing. Open eyes.

It's dark, mostly. There's a bit of light coming from somewhere, just enough to make curtains and furniture into looming shadows.

Don't panic. You know this place. You're not sure why, but you know it. It's not home, it's not the apartment, it's not school, it's...

Oh. It's Father and Matushka's room. She went into labor, he called and asked you to stay with the girls while they went to the hospital.

So why am I awake? ...Oh. Phone. Is ringing. Where is phone? Look around. There is phone.

"Hello again, Ms. March, it's Father. Everything all right there? Good. It looks like this is going to take longer than we'd hoped, so I'll be home in about twenty minutes to, ah, relieve you of your duties. I'll get the girls and bring them up to the hospital- we won't have liturgy today, but you can get home and get some sleep. Are any of the girls awake? Okay, good, it'll be easier if I'm there when they wake up. See you in a bit."

The clock says 6:45. No sooner do I hang up the phone than I hear a tiny voice piping, "Where's Mommy?"

I turn to see a blonde, blue-eyed three-year-old standing in the doorway in a rumpled Little Mermaid t-shirt. She looks worried, but still laughs when I pick her up, twirl her like an airplane, and set her next to me on her parents' bed.

"Mommy and Daddy are at the hospital. The baby's coming."

"There's baby in Mommy's tummy," she informed me ecstatically, as she had done every time I saw her for the past six months.

"There is, and soon you're going to have a baby brother," I announce, and hear a key in the front door.

The toddler precedes me out of the bedroom and down the stairs before I can catch her, skip-trotting down them in a way that makes my heart stop in my throat. Her ability to tumble around like a rubber ball and still evade bloodshed and catastrophe continues to amaze me, and my hands are always outstretched, ready to dive and grab if necessary.

Daddy looks tired, unshaven, but summons a smile and sends me on my way, the three-year-old hanging around his neck. It's not until I look in my purse for my car keys that I realize he ignored my refusal of payment and stuck a couple twenties in there.

By seven-fifteen, I'm walking in my own door, half-expecting to see the air force boys scattered around on beanbags, scribbling on D&D character sheets, which is where I left them at ten p.m. last night, when I got the call asking me to babysit.

The other half of me is afraid I'll find empty soda cups, Chinese takeout cartons, notecards and pencils strewn all over the place, and the boys long gone.

But I was wrong, on both counts: they cleaned.

The floor is clear, beanbags stacked in the corner, blankets folded, pencils on the table, no sign of leftover cartons and cups. They even took out the garbage.

Have I mentioned how much I love them?

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