Your wife is overnight at the hospital once again. You wake at 5AM to your six-year-old climbing into your bed and starting an argument with your four-year-old – who apparently arrived at some earlier point in the night – about how he needs to face the other way because his breath is gross. But she has placed herself between you and the boy, so he voices his own vehement objections about who should get to sleep next to Dad, and it’s not fair unless Dad moves to the middle so they can both snuggle. This commotion summons the cat, who begins to meow loudly because he thinks the fact that people are awake must mean it’s breakfast time. The meowing causes your daughter to panic, because Cromwell is her “heart magnet” and his needs must always be met immediately, but you have to feed him Daddy, because you left the cat food on a high shelf to keep the dog out of it, and she can’t reach it. So she prods you out of bed. But getting out of bed makes the dog whine, because it must be time for her morning walk. And before you know it, you’re shuffling down the cold street in the dark with your son’s dog, muttering to yourself that whoever said “absence makes the heart grow fonder” clearly wasn’t raising four kids.