night night

Tonight I fell into a remote-control-tv channel-flicking-induced temporary coma in front of a bad american sit com. So lock-up duty fell to me. (No rolling off the couch and into bed in this household.)

The routine (for me anyway) goes like this:
-clear various cups, glasses and yogurt pots from around the room and deposit in sink/bin
-turn off bathroom light and open shower curtain so that any child who has to get up in the night can see before they enter the bathroom that there are no monsters hiding in the bathtub
-be sure to leave bathroom door open
-check on daughter
-remove half empty water glass from precarious perch on side of bunk bed
-retrieve enormous hardback Harry Potter 5 book from bed
0-untangle the singular duvet clad leg from duvet so that the rest of daughter can be -covered up
-unplug lilac handbag shaped lamp
-check on fish - which means look at fish to see if catfish is nipping at the others (he's completely devoured 8 already, but the tiger barbs seem to be fending him off)
-be sure to leave door 30% ajar
-check on son
-remove empty water glass from precarious perch on side of bunk bed
-retrieve 2 books, ninja pencil, baseball mitt and skip cap from bed
--untangle solitary duvet covered leg and cover up entire child - twice - he always -kicks it right back off again first time
-unplug neon lights plug
-check on peanut the roboski hamster to make sure that a) he is alive b) he is in his cage and not running free around the house - which he frequently manages c) his 'silent running' wheel is sufficiently padded for his 4 hour nocturnal eddie kidd role -playing session ( if its not, the entire family is awake at 3am listening to a rattly -spinning hamster wheel)
-put out light
-close closet door completely
-be sure to leave room door completely ajar
-lock front door
-turn off all 4 room lamps that I turned on 3 hours before
unplug phone charger
-take glass of water upstairs so that the cocktail of inhibitors, supplements, and herbal remedies I have lined up can be taken
-remove throw pillows from 'my side' of the bed (husband can't manage this when he gets in first for some reason).
-turn off closet light
-unplug lamp
-turn off computer

THEN I can get ready for bed.

I don't recall this sort of task list from Little house on the prairie! Charles didn't even put the fire out. He just packed the sprogs off to the giant child bed in the loft then rolled in beside Mrs Walton and her pigtail and big cotton nightie.
Even the Waltons just kissed granma olive and granpa joe and went off to bed shoutin 'gnite John Boy, gnite Elizabeth, gnite Jim Bob ...'
I'm not really complaining. I obviously like to tuck my kids into bed. And its always a delight to marvel at what I find secreted under their little pillows (rocks, sticky tape, pom pom farms) But I do ask "is it just me??"