I used to sleep once ... at least I think I did.

Yep, now that I think about it - I'm sure of it. There was once a time when I laid my head gently upon a soft cotton pillowcase and closed my eyes and was generally sooner than later transported to a never-never land of dreams and fairies and bliss.

But that all changed one day. Pretty much right about the time my first child came home from the labor and delivery ward. If sleep can be thought of as a Formula One race car humming smoothly along at the perfect rpm around an open and uncluttered track, then George was the brick wall that someone had snuck out there and built between laps.

The verb "collide" -- as in "to crash" -- does not seem quite strong enough. I went from 31 years of nights filled with relatively uninterrupted sleep, to about four and a half hours a night conducted in 20 minute intervals.

He was cute, though, so we kept him.

About 16 months later child No. 2 came along, and while George was sleeping better at this point, Gussie would bring with her the lesson that two children exponentially increase the chance that you will be woken up. No longer could we employ a "2 on 1 defense," it would be strictly "man to man" from here on out.

But the younger team was winning and winning big. If George was the brick wall on the highway of sleep, Gussie was the tire that blew out repeatedly between crashes.

But she was a girl, which was kind of different, so we kept her.

Within about two and a half years, these darling children had the snoozing thing pretty much down, and I seem to recall something approaching the definition of sleep being accomplished on a semi-regular basis. It wasn't the "early to bed late to rise on Saturday morning" sleep of our youth, but it was sleep. Every couple of weeks we actually had a night when we weren't woken up.

Enter Jane Stuart -- A 7 lbs. 8 oz., curly headed bundle of sleep-depriving joy. Same drill, same exponential factor. We were now forced into playing a "zone defense" and as is mostly the case when UVa plays Duke in basketball it was NOT working. Sure, the others were sleeping better, but during the winter when cold and flu viruses ran rampant among us, any thought of real and meaningful sleep was so far out the window as to be in a different time zone.

We kept her too, but I found myself questioning it from time to time. Mostly about 4:00 a.m.

Two years, 38 days, 7 hours and 14 minutes later, "Mr. Rob" joined us and not a defense on the planet has been designed to handle that formation. What we needed was one of those trick defenses such as a "Box and One" or a "Triangle and Two." But alas, we didn't have enough players on the team and recruiting was tough.

Lying in bed one cold, cold night last winter it occurred to me that between our four children, our dog and five smoke detectors that only realize they have low batteries between 1:00 and 5:00 a.m., we had a much greater chance of being woken up than not.

It was a sobering thought.

I also pondered what my reaction would have been if someone had whipped out a crystal ball and shown me at age 17, (the peak of the sinful, indulgent excess sleep years), the amount of sleep, or lack thereof, that I would one day surely face.

I think I would have dropped to my knees and begged unceasingly for mercy.

The odd thing now, however, is that looking back I wouldn't change a single thing. The hours upon hours of sleepless nights don't even appear on the radar screen when considered along side the joy of our children.

And besides, God has seen fit to cut the number of required hours of sleep per night in half -- from around 12 when I was 17 to about six now that I am approaching 40.

Just another small bit of evidence -- he's always got a plan.

I just wish I had known that better when George was born.