Morning Person

I get it.  I am a morning person myself, and I love being a morning person.  I get the feeling, the rush when your eyes flip open and you realize a new day has arrived full of possibilities and responsibilities, and the need to get up and get started.  I love the renewed energy in my muscles and the freshly firing synapses in my rested brain.  I love that glorious few hours when the house is quiet and I can go exercise, read, or sneak around and get things done while my family of hooligans snoozes away.  Morning are magical, and I am a morning person.

Unfortunately, so is Luke.  The earlier the sun gets up, the earlier he gets up.  And right now in mid-July, that is pretty darn early.  Dare I say it, too early for me.

My timer is usually set for 5am, though often I wake up earlier and just can't go back to sleep. (my lucky number is 3am.  If I wake up anytime after 3am for any reason, I can't go back to sleep.)  But in the summer since my kids don't have to be off to school in the morning, I indulge and set my alarm to 6am.  Usually I am up at 5 anyway.  But when I need that extra hour in the summertime, it is so nice to get it.

But now I have this sunny-side-up three year old who rises early, and wants to rouse the entire family with him - starting always with me.

This morning he got up and decided to get some bread and honey for himself, and some for me too.  He came into my bedroom with the two dripping slices of bread, and laid one of them on my chest as I was sleeping.

"One for me, one for Mom," he announces.

"One what?" I think as I  roll to my side.  I quickly discover the "what" at the same time as a sticky little kid in a puffy nighttime diaper climbs into bed with me.

"Sun up!  Mom!  Sun up!  See!"  he exclaims as he pulls my eyelids back and turns my head toward the window to show me proof that the sun is indeed up.  "See.  Sun.  Up!"

There was no denying it.  The sun was definitely up.  But this morning, at least, my body didn't want to be.

I sent my sticky wake up call off to the kitchen with his drippy toast and told him to go wash his hands.  Then I attempted to fall back asleep, trying to ignore the glaring sun and the stickiness all over me.

Soon the bedroom door opens again and Luke is toting a full gallon of milk, a sippy cup, and a lid.  "Mom, sun up.  Sun up NOW!" and tosses the gallon of milk on the bed with a thunk.  Luckily, the lid doesn't pop off.

All right, all right!  I'm up already!  Up to fill a sippy cup with milk.  Up to find honey all over my kitchen, a refrigerator hanging open, and a basketful of clean folded laundry dumped on a sticky floor.  An invigorating morning!  I'd love to go swimming, but don't dare leave my early riser awake alone in a house full of dreamers.

Last week I woke up to "Mom, hode dis!  Hode dis."  My back was turned to him, and I was still half asleep with my eyes closed when I absently-mindedly reached behind me to hold whatever it was Luke needed me to hold so he could climb into my bed.  I discovered real quick what it was I was supposed to hold when ice water poured down my back, not in a sippy cup apparently.  Yikes.  Talk about a wake up call!  I hopped up out of bed as fast as a fireman with a midnight alarm. Luke was standing there watching me with a huge grin on his face.

"Sun up, Mom," like he is sharing some terrific news, "Sun UP!"

Milk Heist

I opened my eyes when I woke up this morning and jumped when I saw this:

I was staring down the barrel of a shiny pistol being wielded by a 2 year old.

He asked for milk.  I gave it to him.  What choice did I have?

Now there is a kid who knows how to get what he wants.  Should I be worried?

A Good Sign?

Yesterday as I was folding the laundry, Luke was helping me until he became intrigued by a pair of underwear.  He put it on right over his diaper.  He was so thrilled by the new big boy look that he dug through the laundry basket and found all the underwear (clean, thankfully!) and put on every pair he could find.  When he got on about 8 or 9 pair, he couldn't even walk anymore.   So what do you think?  Is this a good sign that Lukie is ready for the big time - toilet training?  Or is he just a fashion trendsetter?  Only time will tell.

One of THOSE Mornings!

Ever feel like this?

I had one of those mornings, a real humdinger! Roxanne and Alysa have already heard it - thanks for the ear my friends, and Roxy said, "You SO have to blog that." I think I will feel better when get it all down and throw it into the blogosphere. It's long, but it involves a lot of poop, so it might be worth reading, if you're into that kind of thing.

My bad morning actually started last night. Dennis and I went to the temple. That part was good. But it was our first time leaving the kids home alone to go all the way to Redlands. My mom was 5 minutes away if there was a problem. It was fine. There were no problems. In fact, when we got home after 10pm, the boys were all asleep. That was a good thing, right? School night. But that was also a problem, because they were too asleep! We realized that neither of us had a key and the house was locked up tight. Another good thing - no strangers were getting into that house. Only neither were we. It was serious lock down. No amount of ringing door bell or calling on the phone was waking anybody. Were we going to be spending the night on the trampoline? (Actually, Dennis might like to rough it out there!) After banging on their bedroom window until I thought the glass was about to crack, a light switched on and the shutters flew open, and when my oldest assessed that I was not the boogie man, he unlocked the front door.

The house was a mess. To be fair, I could see that they had attempted to do their dinner chores, but surprisingly their definition of a successfully completed job is remarkably different from my own. I give them credit for trying. I really didn't want to think about the mess by that time. I just wanted to hit the sack.

I found Caleb asleep in my bed. He had peed all over the bed, the comforter, and it went into the mattress. Nice. Dennis stripped down Caleb, and I stripped down bed and hauled it to the laundry room. The mattress needed airing out, so we finally crashed on the sofas. It was late.

So this morning when the alarm went off, we didn't hear it. When I woke up, it was almost 7. Wednesdays are Dennis' early day - 7am meeting. Of course its Wednesday. He jumped up, showered, and ran out the door. Then I hurried and got my middle schoolers up and ready, noticing again my dirty house and realizing that I had a friend coming over at 9am so I could help her make some invitations. My house was no condition for anyone to see it - six boys, six hours, no supervision, remember? It looked even filthier in the light of day. I rushed to clean as much as I could before I had to take my kids to school. When you have a mess like that, and limited time, where do you even start?

In my mad cleaning spree I happened to look up and see the clock. We had to get out the door right now if I was going to get my boys to the middle school. So I herded everyone into the car, snatched Luke out of his crib, and threw him into his car seat in his bulging night diaper. I remember thinking that I should probably change him first, but decided I didn't have time. Hind sight is 20/20, and now I see so clearly that a two minute diaper change would have changed the whole course of my morning, and saved me hours of trouble.

This morning, this very morning, was the morning that Luke figured out how to wiggle out of his car seat. On the drive to school, in the rear view mirror, I saw him bouncing around in the back. It was chaos! The kids were screaming, but I couldn't understand what they were saying. I was yelling at them to get him back into his seat. It is the first week of school, and I knew cops would be everywhere. It took me too long, and another look in the rear-view mirror to realize what the screaming was all about. Luke, in his escape form the confines of his car seat, had torn off the front of his diaper. He was trying to climb over the back of the seat, and his diaper was hanging in a flap behind him. Poop was everywhere! Not in a neat little pellet form, but the sticky, stinky kind. Bad. Bad. So very bad.

I stopped to let the kids out at the school. They squawked and moaned that they had poop on them. I thought of taking them home to clean up, but there was no time. Bad mom told them to find a bathroom. Use lots of soap. I couldn't listen to their protests, as I was out of the car, leaning into the backseat, trying to grab the naked poopy slippery little monster and wedge him back into his poopy seat. Ugh! I was digging around trying to find the wipes. No wipes. I remembered the my good husband had spend labor day cleaning out and vacuuming out the car. He must have taken out the wipes along with the 27 socks, candy wrappers, unmatched shoes, sandwich crusts, and 18 action figures. So much for a clean car.

I didn't know what else to do, so I just rolled down the window and drove home. That was a long ride. At home, I tossed Luke into the tub, then went to tackle the car, armed with disinfecting wipes and lysol. Man, what a lot of work, and so HOT even this early in the morning. It is amazing what heat does to the smell of ripe feces. I cleaned up the car as best I could, but realized that I didn't have time to take the car seat out, take it apart, clean it, and get it put back together and in the car before I had to get the twins to school. Why do they make car seats so hard to clean? Hasn't anyone thought that a toddler might make a mess in their car seat? Hello? Maybe someone needs to ask a mom about designing a car seat. I just grabbed an old towel and threw it over the mess on the car seat, then ran into the house to get a nice fresh diaper on Luke, and get the kids into the reeking car.

While I was in the garage, Luke had dumped water out of the tub all over the floor, and was now in the kitchen, naked, swinging a full open bag of cheerios around over his head- imitating a helicopter, I think. My other three boys stood frozen two feet away while cheerios rained down all around him. By the time I got to him the bag was empty...and breakfast was over.

After a quick sweep of the floor, a diaper and clothes for Luke, and a short but energetic temper tantrum (me, not the toddler), I drove the boys to school. The windows were still open as the car now had the tangy aroma of baked poop and lysol. Back at home I went to get Luke out of his seat, and found that he had adeptly yanked the poop barrier towel out from under him. Of course he had. Another bath, and another change of clothes for Luke. Suddenly it was 9 o'clock and my friend was on her way. My house was still a mess, but it smelled a lot cleaner than a hot car full of poop, so I figured it was good enough. Besides, I figured that if anyone had an excuse for a dirty house, I did.

I was exhausted. After my guest left, I spent the rest of the day on my stripped down bed, and did nothing (except for six loads of laundry, disassembling, hosing down, washing, reassembling, reinstalling a car seat, and five more trips picking up/dropping off kids.) After all, I deserved a break.

Cleaning Up His Image

The other day Luke was taking a bubble bath. He had a big blob of bubbles on his head, so I gave him a mirror so he could see the bubbles on his head. But he quickly became more interested in the funny face in the mirror. He was hilarious - laughing, pointing, and kissing the the blue-eyed babe in the mirror. Luckily my camera was nearby, so I snatched these candid pictures.

Who is that funny looking kid?

Our little Narcissist!

Luke is getting to know himself a bit better.

"BO BOs"