Musical Beds

A few year ago we were over at some friends' house and were looking at their sons' bunkbeds since we were planning on purchasing some for our house. We happened to look over in a corner of the bedroom where a body pillow and blanket were wadded up and Pete, the dad, hurriedly explained that that was his stuff he used when he played musical beds. If one of his kids (and he has four) had a bad dream, was sick, couldn't get to sleep, was scared, or whatever, he would use those things to lie down in that child's room. At that time, even though we had two kids, Chris and I had never played musical beds, so on our drive home we chuckled a bit to ourselves. Sometimes I would fall asleep with our oldest daughter because I just do that sometimes when I am reading at night while laying down. But our second child was still in a crib and loved to sleep. Then we added our third child and they have now all graduated to real "big girl" beds and now we play musical beds.
This is a sample night while playing:
9:00 finish reading stories, say prayers, lay down with oldest daughter while we both read to selves
11:00 wake up still in bed with oldest daughter since I have fallen asleep while reading;
go to own bed
12:30 Middle daughter wakes up (very unusual) needs to go to bathroom. I help. Then she aks
me to lay with her for five minutes.
2:00 youngest daughter starts crying. Go to lay with her because she shares a room and I don't want all three girls up (it's happened before and it isn't fun!).
2:30 go back to own bed
3:00 oldest daughter wakes up and has a bad dream. Could I please lay with her for a few minutes?
4:30 alarm goes off for me to work out. I feel like I have already had one, so I reset it for later. Unfortunately, my youngest daughter woke up with my alarm, too, and thinks it is morning. I convince her to lay by me on the couch.

Doesn't that look fun? It's not often I get to move sleep locations seven times. More often it is only one or two locations, but on the nights I play musical beds, my work out the next day is pretty much shot, and I try to remind myself that they won't always be this age forever. I am sure childcare experts or Super Nanny could solve this problem, but they don't have to live in my house, either. At least this way I am getting some sleep. What does this have to do with books? Not much, except that the nights after a great session of musical beds, I fall asleep even faster while reading.