The Same Thing Happens Every Night

In case you haven't read my blog before, I'm a Bill Cosby fan.

Almost every night after dinner I think about his performance in "Bill Cosby as Himself." The part when he talks about the antics of his five children and wife after dinner every night. I used to play the record and listen to it lying on the living room couch. Little did I know I would one day have five kids of my own and go through the nightly routine myself.

Here are some things that happen (almost) every night at my house.

1. Dinner. This includes me asking everyone repeatedly to stop interrupting each other and "please can one person talk at a time!"

2. Someone spills something. You can set your watch by it.

3. Homework. (Not from home school, only the public school kid has to endure it.)

4. Some sort of performance or musical endeavor. Tonight it was freeze dance.

5. The baby crawls around and gets really dirty.

6. Washing. Dishes, people, laundry...it's always at least one of these or all three.

7. Books.

8. Crying. Someone. Every night. If it's not the kids, it's me. On the inside.

9. Me checking to make sure I have ice cream in the freezer for after bedtime. (I actually never have to check. I always know exactly how much I have.)

10. Phone ringing. Usually multiple times.

11. Yelling. I admit it. It happens. Every night.

12. Rocking the baby. Tucking in and bedtime prayers.

13. Someone fools around instead of lying in bed.

14. The clenched teeth threatening. (If no obedience, as Cosby would say, the beatings begin.)

15. Sleep. This does happen every night. I know. I go in there and look at all five of them every night. They sleep. It is like a deep breath. To begin again.

I am thankful that the same thing happens every night. It is the working gears of a family. In the daily routine you build something. But that fleshed out is pretty ugly much of the time.

Thank you Bill, for going before me. For doing the nightly routine and living to joke about it.

"Think I carried you in my body for nine months so you can roll your little eyes at me? I'll roll that little head of yours down on the floor!" -Bill Cosby

Here is a link to the classic bit The Same Thing Happens Every Night.