Although she is all glitz and glamor on the outside, inside she is mush...one of sweetest, most sensitive individuals I have ever met. So much so that she doesn't want to ever leave us...especially when having to spend the whole night alone in her room.

"I am the only one on this whole house who has to sleep by myself," Senia Mae complains.

"That's not true," I lie, "You have bunny, chicken, all of those little stuffed dogs, and Elsa and Anna sleeping right in that cradle." My detraction works for the moment and I am able to kiss her goodnight and leave the room. She is right, everyone else does have someone to sleep with, but I am not going to admit that to her.



One o'clock in the morning creeps around and I hear the shuffling footsteps stopping at my side of the bed. She doesn't ask anymore, she just hopes she can sneak in without me noticing. Sometimes I am so tired that I am not aware until a surging hot flash floods my innards because I am surrounded on all sides. I've got Kim on one side, Senia Mae spooning the other, and the kitten curled up behind my knees. Sweat beads my forehead and I have to thrash the covers off, but they won't move because Senia Mae lies on top of them.

"Senia Mae," I groan, "you have got to go back to you own bed." She moves about one inch to the edge of the bed, hoping I will fall back asleep. Although consciousness is poking my face from its silent abyss, I am trying to remain asleep without a battle of wills that often ends in tears...tears laced with enough guilt that she thinks she may get her way. "Mae Mae, time for your bed."

"Aw, come on, you're not even giving me a chance," she pleads. Where did that come from? I think to myself, laughing at how her comment sounds like it came from an adult.

"For real this time. I can't sleep all crammed up like this," I say quietly, trying not to wake Kim. I almost have to roll her off the edge of the bed and she stomps to her room. But that is not the end. She decides to stand in her bedroom doorway and whimper about how lonely it is in her room. I try to ignore this and just let her fall asleep. The specialists would say, "Do like Elsa and 'Let it go.'" But I have a very heavy conscious and it is still the night of her birthday. I don't have the heart to let her biggest day of the year end in a weepy mess. So I drag myself out of my warm, comfortable bed and console her in the doorway.

"Hey, kiddo, why don't you get in your bed and I will stay with you until you fall asleep," I say. She nods her head and wipes a tear with her pudgy little hand as she heads under her Ariel blanket. Sitting on her very small princess fold out chair, I sit quietly with my hand on her chest, feeling it rise and fall as she drifts away peacefully.

When I think she is asleep after about fifteen minutes I stand up and one eye immediately opens, as if she were peering through a monocle, spying on me. I sit down and wait another thirty minutes, until my legs are feeling pins and needles and I am certain she is in a deep sleep. I tiptoe back to my room and get under the covers, now fully awake because I have been up for over an hour.

Finally I coax myself back to sleep, but after another hour or so the midnight bed monster returns. This time I am too tired to talk, argue, or carry her back to bed. I just move on over because I have to be completely functioning in just two hours. This has happened on and off for the past five years.

So to all who all who enviously ask, "You sit in the hot tub and drink your coffee every morning?" My answer is YES! It is one of the few guilty pleasures that I have left and a good way to bribe my sleep deprived body out of bed!