Children's Games

6:19am... Running late this morning, at least Honey Bee is... she just hurried out the door, prodding Little Man along as he was trying to watch YouTube videos on his tablet. Mornings are a challenge around here.

The day starts around 4:52 am, when my jerk of an internal clock wakes me up to tell me that my alarm will be going off in about eight minutes. Kind of a crappy thing to do to a person, but that's the kind of relationship we have with each other. After ten minutes of snoozing and cuddling with my sweetheart, we force ourselves out of bed. I head to the kitchen to get lunches packed, and coffee made, while she brushes out her hair (which is quite long,) and gets ready to shower.

Then I head into Little Man's room and begin the laborious process of rousing him from bed. He's staring down the barrel of being five years old - his birthday is in mid-November. It is tough to get a four year-old up when they aren't ready, without pissing them off. I'm sure that some of you can sympathize. And I'd like to think that after the last eight months of preschool, I have managed to acquire a few decent approaches. However, let's be honest. The tricks up my sleeve simply move the needle from practically impossible to minimally probable.

But it gets done, every weekday, every week, until he's ready for public school, and we buy ourselves... maybe an extra hour of sleep, if we're lucky. For the moment, he eventually rises and shuffles into our bathroom to potty and jump into the shower with Mama. This buys me about another ten minutes, usually enough time to get some coffee made and guzzle a few scalding gulps down before he's rinsed off and headed back my way.

We have this after-shower ritual, which I love, because some day's the mornings are the only time I get to see him. I dry him off after he steps out of the shower, wrapping one towel around him and using a second one to dry his hair, face, and all the spots the wraparound towel doesn't easily reach. Then we head into his bathroom to comb hair, brush teeth and tend to any "owies" that he might have - anything from bug bites to rashes to blisters from his new shoes rubbing his tender feet. Usually, there is a game of "where did he go?" in between the shower and the morning preparations. This game involves him hiding, either under the blankets of our bed, or under his wraparound towel, while I pretend that he has vanished and wonder aloud what I am going to do. Then I start to "notice" odd things about the towel/blanket, and eventually am surprised to find him concealed therein.

It is the highlight of many mornings, and someday soon he will decide that it's a silly game. Then we won't play it anymore. Some mornings thoughts are bittersweet... 6:45am...