So last night, I stayed up later than I ought to have watching something on MSNBC from 11pm to midnight.

(After extensive research just now, I remembered that it was the season finale for season two of the show "The Restaurant," starring Rocco DiSpirito and Jeffrey Chodorow. Don't ask me why. I have no idea. Suddenly I am enamored with shows about restaurants. I think that if they had a reality show based around my friend Andy's pizza shop (Cooley's Pizza) in Suwanee, Georgia, I'd watch that too).

Anywho, I finally went to sleep about 11:50 or so, and at 3:30am, miss stinky herself (oh...I'm talking about Lauren here) was awake and calling me.

In the past (distant and recent), I have caved in to this behavior. But in my defense, it's mostly when she's sick or seems sickly. But anyway, I'll bring her into our room, we'll all toss and turn while she kicks us or pokes Molly in the jibblies or tries to jam a pacifier in someone's mouth or sticks her fingers in my ear.

Then, it's back to her room where we "try" to sleep in her big girl bed, but usually to no avail.

But last night, I went in, looked at her, she stood in her crib, opened her arms to grab around my neck and I said "Nope. Not tonight. I am going to get you some water, we can talk about whatever you want for a minute, but then you're laying down and going back to sleep."

She looked at me...shocked.

I got the water, we talked for a minute, I fixed her bed back up, and she laid down. I then left the room and, with 45 minutes to an hour (where she was mostly silent), she went back to sleep.

HOORAY!!! I am the boss, dammit!!

Next stop: stealing her crib from her room when she's not looking.