Before I had children, I loved sleeping late. In fact, I can't remember ever passing up an opportunity to lazily pass away the morning hours; even if I was awake, I would stay in bed, savoring the last few minutes of warm covers and an empty schedule. But then I had children...
Emma's natural clock is set at 7:00. Rise and shine, my eye. She's up and chipper and calling out with great enthusiasm, "Milk! Milk!" Now that Samantha has entered the fray, five-o-clock wake up calls are the name of the game. I blearily trudge out of bed, usually still half asleep, as I go try to convince her that she has no need for anything at such an hour.
I honestly have not used an alarm clock since Emma was born. Between my two lovely daughters, the chance to sleep past 7 has not presented itself.
So you can imagine my surprise on Saturday morning. (Aaaah, Saturday morning used to evoke such pleasant memories of nothing to do but sleep...) Josh had an early morning meeting, so he was out of the house. As the sunlight strangely fought for space inside my bedroom, I groggily glanced at the alarm clock. Hmmm...8:41.
Eight-forty-one?! My mind raced, frantically wondering why I hadn't heard the girls yet. I threw back the sheets and ran to emma's room, convinced that her silence had made her the victim of a kidnapping, or worse yet, a SIDS death. Never-mind that she is past that stage. I grabbed the handle and rushed through the door to emma's room, where I saw her little tummy peacefully rising and falling in a deep sleep.
Confused, and still baffled at the silence in my house, I walked to the living room to check on samantha. She, too, was still alive and well. My children were not kidnapped. They had not suffocated. For some strange reason - a magnificent aligning of the planets, or more accurately a much-needed blessing from God - my children managed to sleep in...on a Saturday morning...when I had nothing to do.
And all God's people said..."AMEN!"
2 comments:
Thank you Jesus!!! Yay for sleeping.
I would guess that frolicking in the bathroom water throughout the night wore the two young ones out, thus explaining the deep Saturday morning sleep (and further legitimizing the circumstantial evidence regarding the 'water mystery'). The sad thing is that just about the time your kids finally DO leave the house, your own internal clock takes over, and you will, despite all attempts to the contrary, find yourself awaking at the crack of dawn, rising with the chickens, and basically reverting back to your childhood days (I don't care what your mom says...you probably woke up early that first morning, cried for a couple of hours or so, and fell BACK asleep worn out from bawling. Ever since we moved away from the Freight Trains and the Flight Patterns, nothing wakes her...but she wakes everything). The other 'childhood habit' you pick up when you get 'old', is needing that NAP again, that you THOUGHT you had abandoned as a child. It starts out on just Sunday afternoon, expands to Saturday, and soon, becomes a full fledged daily 'siesta'...which does prepares your schedule 'perfectly' for being a grandparent and matches up quite well with the sleeping patterns of the North American Emma Bear and the Asian Mantha Cat thus completing the 'circle of life' (start the Lion King music).
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