Mornings are for the birds

 

Are you a morning person?  Yes?  More power to you, I say.

 

My mother is the most "morning" morning person I know.  She wakes up at 5am without even needing her alarm clock.  Sleeping in for her is staying in bed past 6:30.  She wakes up in a good mood and happily goes about her day.  Of course, this also means that she's dozing in her chair by 8pm every evening!

I inherited a lot of things from my mom, but that is not one of them.  I despise mornings.  Alarm clocks are my enemy.  I don't want to sleep until noon every day, but being able to wake up by myself at 8:00 or 9:00 would be bliss.  Having to get up at 5:55am every weekday simply because my son wants to ride the bus does NOT make me happy. 

I would gladly stay up until the wee hours every night, reading, catching up on tv shows, just enjoying the peace and quiet of the house.  Unfortunately staying up late means I'm even MORE tired and lazy in the mornings, so the occasions when I  do that are few and far between. 

My mother and I have passed on these morning traits to my children.  J is the morning person like his Grammie.  He is always all smiles when I wake him up, regardless of what time it is.  On weekends when I don't wake him up, he is still wide awake by 7am, busily building with his LEGOs or playing a video game.  K, on the other hand, is my morning twin (although I don't think even *I* am that grouchy!).  She is a beast to wake up.  She doesn't normally sleep late (maybe 8am on weekends), but whenever she has to get up before she is ready, watch out. 

In my little world, midnight is a much happier hour of the day than 6am.  I wish I knew how to wake up and embrace the morning, like my mother.  If there is a secret, she hasn't shared it with me, so I guess I'll continue to glare at my phone when the alarm goes off and do my best to drag myself to bed at a decent hour.

Out of the mouths of babes...

This week our school district is working on a fitness grant and all of the students who want to participate were given a pedometer to wear for five days.  We are supposed to record their total steps each evening, as well as keeping nutritional logs for each day (they are going to LOVE my kids' nutrition... ha).

The school sent home a paper last week explaining this, but I had forgotten about it until Monday afternoon when the kids got home.  J and K ran up to the house from the bus and K proudly announced, "Mom, I have a thermometer!" 

Persistence or ignorance?

If you are a parent, then you know that children sometimes (ok, often), get their days and nights mixed up when they are babies.  Those endless hours when your child is awake needing SOMEthing when the rest of the house is quiet and you are desperate for sleep are excruciating and can seem like there is no light at the end of the tunnel.  You can try to nap when your baby does, but there's not really anything that makes it fun to be up at 3am when you really just want to sleep.  That new baby smell and the soft, sweet snuggles only take you so far.

Why am I writing about this when it's obvious I am not a mother of a new baby, you ask?  Apparently my 15-year-old cat thinks she is a newborn.  Ever since Pumpkin died, Shadow has been annoyingly clingy and desperate for attention.  I understand she is lonely.  He was her buddy for a dozen years.  I miss him too.  But I do not sit up and cry all night long. 

She is driving me crazy.

We have always put the cats in the laundry room at night to sleep.  That is where their bed is, where their food is, and where their bathroom (litter box) is.  This has not changed in all the years we have lived in this house.  Shadow has made it perfectly clear that she does not like to be in there by herself.  AT ALL. 

My bedroom is at the opposite end of the house from the laundry room, and hubby sleeps with a fan on.  Despite that, I can STILL hear her howling.  All.  Night.  Long.

Seriously.  She never stops.  She starts meowing the second we put her in there, and she's still at it when I wake up in the morning.  She doesn't stop until we open the door, and then she follows me around the house meowing until I've paid sufficient attention to her.  Talk about needy.

If it were up to me, I would just go to bed with her happily snoozing in her recliner.  Maybe then the all night performances would quit.  On the other hand, she tends to be more of a pest than anything, so she'd probably keep coming in our room and bugging us.  I keep telling myself that she will calm down, that she'll get used to it, that eventually she will give up.  In this battle of wills, though, my cat may prove to be more stubborn than I am!