He Just Wants To Be Loved, Is That So Wrong?

About 99.9% of the mornings in our house my husband gets up first with the kids. He's definitely a hands-on dad, getting the coffee made and breakfast ready for each of the kids. This is just one of the many reasons that I love him so. But I digress.

Usually our son begins the morning parade between 6:30 and 7am, shortly followed by our younger daughter.

It's a small blessing that these days our oldest is discovering the joys of sleeping in. Albeit only 30 minutes or so on most days, but she'll dive in deeper if she needs it; up to an hour and a half on a weekend morning sometimes. Which is a major treat if you are used to the young ones getting up when the rooster crows.

It's always a little painful if I have to wake her up at 7:30am on a weekday, but that's going to be happening closer to 7am now that we are headed toward back-to-school time.

I joyfully remember those lazy Saturday mornings when I'd sleep until 10 or 11am as a teenager.

Ah, those days seem so far away now. Waking up to the hazy almost afternoon, knowing that there was nothing to do but hang out with my sister and try to convince my mom to drive us to our friends house or the mall. I'm going to drift off and remember that carefree time in my life when my biggest worry was what I was going to wear to school on Monday.

Mmmmmmmm.

Okay, I'm back now. Ouch. That was a bit of a crash landing.

Come to think of it, crash landing is a good way to describe this morning, when my husband got up at 7am as our son demanded to be released from his cell. Not so early, I know. We are lucky. But still, I just couldn't drag myself out of bed yet.

I guess it doesn't help that he wakes up and cries as loud as he can. I don't remember my other two doing this little routine. I have clear memories of my oldest just talking in bed, having a grand ol' time until we would finally come in and get her. And I'm pretty sure my middle child did this too, although admittedly, the memories start to get a little fuzzier with her. But I know she didn't holler at the top of her lungs.

So there he is crying in his crib and along comes my husband to calm him. And it works. It's the same at naptime. You pick him up and he snuggles in for a good hug and enjoys the ride downstairs to the kitchen.

But then the minute you try to put him down or in his high chair, he screams again. He wants his milk cup, and occasionally he wants food, but most of the time he just wants to be held.

This is where the problems come in. My husband wants to make coffee and get his own morning started, and not just minister to the boy. And I'm the same way in the morning. Especially since I'm not that social when the day starts, which is where this pattern of my husband handling the wake up calls began.

We've got work to do. There are lunches to be made, two other kids to tend to for breakfast, and we mustn't forget the coffee forever getting cold as it sits unsipped on the counter. Plus we always have a dishwasher full of clean dishes that aren't just going to put themselves away now, are they? And lest we forget that we big people also need to consume some type of nourishment as well.

And there's our son, demanding to be picked up. He'll have none of it. He just gets louder with his crying and screaming until you surrender to his demands. Some mornings are better than others, but this is usually the pattern that we have around here.

And this morning was especially loud.

So my husband became a member of the Twisted Sister Fan Club and decided he wasn't gonna take it. He put him down on the floor and let him cry. Then he sat in a chair and tried to get a grip back on his happy place while reading the paper and drinking his coffee. With our son trying to claw his way back onto his lap, piercing the invisible walls that my husband was trying his darnedest to keep up.

This final round of primal screams is what eventually got me out of my sleepy-head state and back into reality. I got my butt down there in a hast and took over the hard core TLC program that my son enrolled in upon birth.

They really ought to put some kind of parent authorization on the enrollment form for that program.

The funny thing is, I just said to my sister last week that I need to start getting up at 6:30am every day so that I can get things done before any kids get up. Like drink my coffee while it's hot, for starters. Then I'd be in a better place when cry-baby our son gets up, soon followed by the other two and all the chaos that ensues.

Somehow I just can't let go of that notion of sleeping in. I want to go back in time to when my mornings were just mine, and my subconscious knows that the best way to do it is in dreamland. So I hear the baby cry and I think "not now mom, I don't want to go to school" and I shove a pillow over my head and go back to sleep. And so far my husband has indulged this teenager like behavior.

But I think it's time to pay the piper.

I gotta get the worm. Rise and shine.

And all that other early morning crap.

These three little people that run around our house really are my kids, proving that I must be one of the adults around here.

And I have to start acting like it.

Yuck.