MARK MY WORD: IN THE PARENTING WORLD, SLEEP CAN BE A GAMBLE

Once upon a midnight dreary as I pondered weak and weary, only one thought came into my mind -- will my children go to sleep?

It's funny. When we're kids, we can't stand to take naps. When we're parents, we crave them.

For parents, getting that Saturday afternoon nap is every bit as precious as winning the state lottery. Maybe more so.

Our children, Becca and Bailey, are notorious late-nighters. But lately Becca has been falling asleep before Bailey.

Bailey used to be the earlier-to-bed child. But these days, she is going strong late into the evening.

If I could only get her to walk on a treadmill connected to an electric generator, I could power my whole house.

At age 2, Bailey is a bundle of energy. So is 6-year-old Becca, for that matter.

Children have a way of sucking energy out of parents. We try to guard ourselves against it. Joni and I try to eat right and take our vitamins.

But it doesn't help. We continue to wilt against the onslaught of childhood energy.

Of course, we can't always blame our children for our state of tiredness.

The other night, I traveled to St. Louis with a friend of mine to see a hockey game.

The Blues won 4-0. We had great seats, courtesy of my wife, who bought them for me for my birthday.

We ended up partying in St. Louis until well after midnight. Dawn was just around the corner by the time we got back to Cape Girardeau.

Our late-night fun included a stop at the Casino Queen. Our hockey tickets got us free admission to the boat.

I'm not much of a gambler. Neither is my friend Rob.

We played the slot machines, which is another way of saying we were robbed.

Those one-armed bandits are addictive things. It's the sound of tokens dropping into the bin that mesmerizes people.

Casinos do a better job of taking your money than the tax collector.

Neither of us invested much money in the slot machines. Instead, we kept moving from machine to machine like traveling salesmen in search of the big score.

We didn't strike it rich. But we didn't lose our shirt either.

For some reason, almost everyone who frequents a casino seems to smoke.

The smell is everywhere and so are the packs of cigarettes. The only way to escape it is to go to a small, closed room on the boat where a few people can gamble without needing oxygen.

Personally, I was glad to get back to Cape Girardeau. You can inhale only so much smoke before you start feeling like a walking cigarette.

None of this gambling stuff is nearly as much fun as watching my wife auction off her Beanie Babies for a profit.

A night out on the town is nice, but it doesn't compare to family fun.

Our youngest daughter, Bailey, regularly comes home with a report from day care that recounts exactly what she did all day while Joni and I were at work.

The other day, Bailey came home with a report that said that she and others in her class had painted with marbles in a shoe box and learned rhymes.

"Bailey had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, crackers and applesauce for lunch and took a good nap.

"We jumped in/out of hula hoops. A fun day," her teacher wrote.

It sounded good to me. It's too bad in a way that we have to grow up.

A day of marbles and hula hoops would do us all some good.

Now, if only we could get our kids to go to sleep we could have time for fun things like that.

~Mark Bliss is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.