Twas the night before, well, the next morning...
... and all through the house, not a creature was stirring - except for Aidan.

I'm not sure what the deal is, Aidan continues to wake up at least once in the middle of the night, generally around 1:30am these days. He'll wake up, take his Aidan sized, white blanket with satin trim and exit his room, turning to shut the door behind him, and toddle down to his sleepless parents room. He's not really awake, but not really asleep either. It doesn't normally take much more then picking him up, carting him back to his room and placing him back on his bed and he's nearly fast asleep. The key word being 'nearly'. He will lay there, not moving, breathing as if he's asleep, but the minute I try to exit the room, WHAM! there it is, the half hearted effort at a whine - the indication that he's not asleep, and I'm not going to be able to leave until he is. Yippie.

This morning was a slight turn on the normal routine however. Aidan, in his setting out on his nightly excursion, didn't quite get his feet on the floor as gracefully as is his norm. Ma in her 'kerchief heard the thud milliseconds before I in my cap leapt up before I had actually woken up - landing nearly flat on the floor myself while the 'I've fallen and I can't get up' cry continued to emanate from Master Aidan's end of the hallway. Still half asleep, my hands and feet seemingly emulating that of the Roadrunner cartoon character, spinning round and round until I was actually upright and moving forward towards the cry - my progress only momentarily interrupted as I became one with our partially closed bedroom door.

Recovering, opening the partially ajar door the full extent, I continued down the hallway like a bumpercar with a drunken teenager behind the wheel, bouncing off one wall, then the opposite railing until I arrived at Aidan's room where, it being too dark to see and not wanting to turn on the light, I resumed my previously unintentional position on all fours and made my way towards the tired cries of one who had fallen out of bed. There was Aidan, sprawled out on the floor, face first and none too happy about it.

I picked him up, sort of, however in my still not quite fully awake state and it being dark, I managed to mishandle my young offspring and he returned the few inches to the floor with a minor thud. That certainly didn't seem to help the situation.

I did recover, and was able to successfully get Aidan off the floor, console him until he stopped crying, get him back into his bed, wait for the tell tail sign of constant breathing and begin heading out of the room. Then there it was. The floor creaked as I walked over it, followed immediately by the well known, half asleep whimper from the bed. At least by this time I was fully awake. Lucky me.