Number 2 is getting sick. My wife, Number 1, and I have all been sick, Number 1 most spectacularly by throwing up through the night a few days earlier. This morning I needed to be at work a 6am.

There is something terribly unholy about a marketer getting up before 6. It’s a different crowd that works that early—traders and investment analysts (at least on this side of the country) who bleed Starbucks and squint at the sunlight. The lights don’t even turn on until 7am.

I knew something was wrong when I had to use my access card to get into the building and onto my floor. It’s not right. That card is to be used for watching the fireworks over the city on New Years, not for coming in before the security guy even gets up.

Number 2 was up off and on all night, being sick and being that he is not yet a month old and hasn’t really figured out the sleeping thing. My wife—my sick, tired-from-packing-our-home-for-the-move, not-yet-recovered-from-having-a-baby, dealing-with-sick/vomiting-kids wife—kindly stayed up with him. At just after 5 this morning, he succumbed and she started to drift off to sleep as I started to leave.

And then I heard Number 1 wake up.

That’s a problem.

My choices at this point were limited:

1. Get to work on time. Let Number 1 get up at the very time that Number 2 and my wife go to sleep. Return to one less family member at the day’s end.
2. Get to work late. Rush over to his crib, let him know that it is still night and he needs to lie down. Hold his hand and sing him songs from Sound of Music (he prefers his mom to sing from Cinderella, but understands I am weak with those songs).

He fell asleep soon after the second refrain of Do-Re-Me.