by R.L Hanlon

Created on: June 13, 2008

The baby's screaming continued to get louder and more ferocious. She'd already attended to him twice, even brought him into their bed. But he's started to how again. Raphy threw the covers back and stomped over to the baby monitor and ripped the cord from the wall. The way he was screaming she didn't need to listen to him in surround sound.

She dived back under the covers, rolling over and putting the pillow over her head. But she could still hear his wretched sobs, reaching a crescendo and then quieting, and then again returning to the loud wails her one year old son loved to use. She turned onto her back looking up at the ceiling. Taking deep breaths she tried to calm herself down, her anger rising and her heart feeling as though it was about to explode.

Raph looked across at her husband. Peter was still snoring, sleeping through the crying as he had every night since her first son was born four years ago.
"Typical." She hissed. Nasty enough to portray her anger but quiet enough not to wake him. But still no response from the other side of the bed.

Four years of perpetual tiredness. Four years of interrupted sleep and Raphael felt like putting a pillow over her son's head, just to stifle that crying and just to get some sleep. She wouldn't of course, but its no wonder some parents lose their cool, she thought to herself.

"Just shut up would you. Shut up! Shut up! Please." She yelled out to her son.

Kicking her blankets off, she threw her legs off the bed and rose abruptly, exaggerating her movements to try and get some response from the sleeping dead laying next to her. Just as she reached the door, Raph noticed the baby had stopped crying.

She tiptoed back to bed as the slightest sound could make the child erupt into his wails again. Even switching a light switch off, or the flush of the toilet will awaken her children. Climbing back into bed she carefully pulled the cover over her again, settling on her side to attempt to get to sleep again.

Raphael loved being a mother, loved it to bits. Her oldest son turned four recently. He was the apple of her eye, the one to give her lots of hugs and kisses and even referred to himself as, "Moms boy." Her daughter is two and a half and is a sprightly little thing. Always into everything, always up to mischief or causing destruction somewhere in or out of the house.

Raph laughed to herself as she remembered her daughter giving herself a haircut the other week. Those adorable big brown eyes blinking at her, all innocent

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