I would de-stress with yoga if I could find the floor.

This was the scene following my eight-year-old's sleepover on Saturday. It began at 5:30, with pizza, cake, presents and a round of Cadoo. At 9:30, I turned out the lights, issued a sternly worded warning, and pulled the bedroom door partly shut. As I was walking away, I heard a whisper:

"The coast is clear! Now we can start the party!"

Several sternly worded warnings later, I went to bed, thinking I had gained the upper hand.

At four-o-freakin-clock, I opened one eye to find my son standing over me in the dark. "Mom, so-and-so has a blister. He needs a band-aid."

I stumbled to the bathroom closet to retrieve a band-aid and opened the bedroom door. Empty. With a growing sense of dread, I made my way downstairs. There, in the family room, were six wide-awake boys, one Cartoon Network, and half the contents of three boxes of sugar-coated cereal strewn across the floor.

They stared at me like racoons caught in the trash. I stared back, calculating the energy I would have to expend shepherding them all back to bed and getting them to settle down. I assessed my resources and tactical options.

Let the history books show, at 4:39 in the morning, the twenty-seventh day of January, in the year of our lord two thousand and seven, the territory of the family room was officially conceded.

I fear the tide has turned against us. The best we can hope for now is a corner of our own bedroom. May god have mercy on our souls.