Mornings

Morning routines are important. Each family develops their own rhythm, their own flow that works best for them. I know of some families that have mornings down to an exact science with each member knowing exactly what they have to do in order for everyone to leave on time. We are not that family. The only way to describe mornings in our house is chaos. A good day is when the words “We’re going to be LATE!” are only yelled once. This is not to say I’m not trying to find a schedule that works – just that when you have two children who get up 2-3 times each most nights out of a week – schedules tend to be fluid.

So you can imagine my surprise when I woke up in the morning and realized that not only had my alarm not gone off yet but this was the FIRST time I had woken up since going to bed the night before. Most people would probably bask in the glow of a successful night; enjoy having a couple of extra minutes to lounge before starting the day. I am not most people. My first thought – check and make sure they’re breathing! OK, everyone’s breathing – wait for the heart rate to return to normal and proceed with the regular morning routine, doing everything incredibly slowly and quietly as not to wake anyone up.  Twenty minutes later you can guess what happened – yep, I was behind schedule once again. Turns out that not waking everyone up earlier than usual is great – until it makes  all tasks take three times longer than they should and results in everyone being late – again.

In the midst of this terrible realization I heard little feet running out of my daughter’s room. “Mama-mama-mama! Mama-mama-mama!” She keeps yelling until she sees me. Then she stops, grins and points at herself. “I nigh-nigh! I GOOOOOOD nigh-nigh!” It probably says something that she’s so proud of herself for sleeping all night. Like MAYBE her mother begged her to “PLEASE stay asleep tonight!” when she was going to bed the night before. But hey, it apparently worked. Another thing that seemed to work – putting the 2 year old in charge of waking up her brother. I’m sure he didn't appreciate the slobbery kisses wake-up call, but he WAS out of the bed and at the table in record time – AND he managed to get to school a whole ten minutes early. Guess I’ll see what works tomorrow, the baby may have a new job as an alarm clock.