My kids all sleep through the night. The 9 and 7-year-old have long mastered this skill. And the baby is trying. He’ll give us a day or two of eight hour stretches, and even when he does wake, it’s usually only once.

But guys, I’m still tired. I’m so darn tired.

My husband and I were talking about this the other night. You know, in between trying to get 20 minutes of kid free TV, while simultaneously holding our eyelids open with pencils.

“Why are we so tired? The kids are sleeping? We shouldn’t be this tired! We got more sleep last night than we have in months! But, we are so tired. Maybe more now than when the baby was waking every two hours!”

And then we ran into a friend of ours at Target. (Because, duh.) He was there getting kid stuff too and he said,

“The wife and I keep saying we should go out and do something at night. But by the end of the day, we’re just so tired.”

We’re just so tried.

Because we’re cutting hot dogs, and wiping faces and pouring milk and making grilled cheese sandwiches and nursing hungry babies.

We’re working late nights and early mornings and extra hours on the weekends, hoping to save just enough to pay off a little debt or go on a much-needed family vacation, or heck, just to pay the electric bill.

We’re volunteering in our community and helping our neighbors and serving at church and organizing PTO meetings.

We’re running our kids to dance practice and volleyball practice and football practice and Wednesday night church and Thursday night soccer games.

We’re trying to figure out how the heck to help our kids with this new common core math system, and signing daily planners, and making sure they know how to spell dream and please.

We’re so tired because we’re raising these fantastic kids, giving them every ounce of our soul so they can have the childhood we had (or didn’t have).

We’re doing all the things for all the people from sunup to sundown and even when we sleep, even when our bodies finally rest, we either toss and turn because we’re thinking of all the things we need to do or we’re dreaming about it.

We’re so grateful, right? This stage, this life. Please, well rested younger and older friends, do not misread this. We’re so incredibly thankful for this life.

But we’re tired too. Please pass the coffee.