BREAKING NEWS! What a 5-year-old American girl in Colorado has to say about the royal wedding!

I just managed my first all-nighter in I don't know how long. Because I'm teaching my third class in a row, without breaks between, and because senior theses and junior thesis proposals have come in this week, I'm awash in student papers: from last block, from this block, from students who aren't even mine. The reading, commenting, and grading mounts.

I started on the most urgent stack last night at 11pm, after prepping for today's class. These were the drafts due back to my students with comments this morning. By 3am the unread stack was still deep...so I turned on the royal wedding. Because of course, good cynical American republican that I am, I would never deign to watch the royal wedding unless I happened already to be up and in need of a stimulus to keep me awake. Of course.

At 3:30 am I heard a small, remarkably awake voice calling from Edith's room. "Mom?" I went in. "I'm just waking up to find out if it's time yet for the wedding, and what's going on. I'm totally awake." So my partner in guilty pleasure came down and joined me on the couch. I know--it's ridiculous to get a five year old out of bed at 3:30 am on a school night to watch TV. When I was five, it was just happenstance that I awoke one night on a family  vacation to a strange sound in the room where I was sleeping (which turned out to be my brother grinding his teeth in his sleep), and fleeing the scary noise, was baffled and utterly disoriented to find my mother and aunt hunched over the television in the middle of the night, watching a fairy prince and princess wave from a golden carriage as they rode past cheering crowds. To save Edith similar disorientation should she happen to be awakened by the noise of the TV in the wee hours, I brought her in on it from the get-go. After all, she's at the peak of her fairytale-princess enthusiasms, and shouldn't one seize organic opportunities to encourage a child's native interests?

Edith came in just as members of the royal family were arriving at Westminster Abbey and remained remarkably attentive until all the main characters had again passed through the gates at Buckingham Palace. In between, she offered the following comments:

• After the bride and her father had made their way down the aisle to the front of the abbey: "Whew. I bet she's glad that's over. That was probably one of the hardest parts for Kate." (Edith herself  expressed marked shyness last month about having to walk down the aisle as a flower girl in front of all those eyes.)

• When the archbishop of Canterbury began to pray: "Finally we're hearing one of the people who's in the movie...instead of those people who you can't see whose voices are just above the movie talking and talking."

At 5am Alice woke up for her regular morning nursing session, which usually happens in our bed. Instead, I carried her downstairs. Of course, she was curious and sat up to see what was going on. She wanted to watch, too. And she put it all together:

• Earlier this week Edith had been showing Alice the cover of the current New Yorker and explaining, as best she understood, why it was funny. Watching the royal carriages roll through the streets of London, Alice suddenly exclaimed, "Where's their bed? I want to see them in their bed with the mother [sic] in the blue dress and the father there!"

• We turned it off then. Edith asked sleepily if there was any more, and I told her the new couple would appear on the palace balcony and kiss in a bit, but that she should go back to sleep. Both girls returned to bed. But half an hour later, Alice popped up and demanded, "Is it time for them kiss on the balcony? I want watch them kiss on the balcony!"She marched to the TV, turned it on, and intently watched the prince and new princess as they waved to the crowds--balcony yes, but where was the kiss? Alice was furious to learn she had missed it.

Paparazzi in training? What have I done?

But the papers are graded. On to the next stack...