Sleepy Little Secret

Want to know one of my "dirty little secrets?" (Why do they call it that?)

Most mornings I sleep in later than my young children, always have...always will.

From an early age I train (or in a dead sleep inform) them that they can get their own breakfast (cereal, poptart, then graduating to the toaster for a waffle) and a juice box. When my older kids were little, juice boxes were not so prevalent, so the night before I would pour their juices in sippy cups and store them in the fridge. If I didn't get that done, they got to pour their own...a feat they accomplished well before most of their peers. All of my kids became quite adept at managing their first meal of the day while Mom kept snoozing away in bed. Some say I'm a slacker; others say a genius. Either way, it works for me.

Well, my third-born, Katie, is a planner. Every night when we exchange hugs and kisses before bedtime she asks, "What is tomorrow?" If you can imagine, she has trouble saying "r's" in English, but has no trouble putting on a Spanish flair and trilling her "r's", so when she asks this question it actually comes out, "What is tomorrrrrow?" We never give her an answer...or we tell her something she doesn't want to hear (i.e. we're cleaning the house). Every once in a great while she hears something exciting(i.e. we're taking the train downtown). She must live for those moments, because she ALWAYS asks.

The following morning, Katie, who is usually the first one up in our house, comes to my bedside and says, "Mom, can I go downstairs now?" If it's before 7am, I make her go back to bed, if after then she can get up. Now that I've trained her to not get out of bed before 7am (she has been known to lay there watching the clock) all I have to do is grunt. Yes, grunt.

Well, Katie, being Katie, never restrained herself to just that one question. Her morning "greeting" usually went like this, "Mom, can I go downstairs and get a bowl of Reeses Puffs (yes, we eat junk cereal - another dirty little secret), watch Hi-Five, get dressed, go outside and check the weather, pack a bag for Grandma's house, etc. She just goes on and on with her plans for the day. One morning I had had enough! I snipped, "Katie, just say, can I go downstairs and not blah, blah, blah!" The next morning I got a short little question that I grunted to and we were back in business (sleeping, that is.)

A couple of mornings ago I was awake enough to hear Katie's morning question. It went literally just like this:

K: "Mom?"

M: "Huh?"

K: "Can I go downstairs and blah, blah, blah?"

M: "Uh-huh."

She leaves the room and I wake enough to think, "Did she really say what I think she said?" I then thought that I'd wake up the next morning to see if she said it again.

She didn't let me down. I got the "Can I go downstairs and blah, blah, blah?" I just cracked up! The third morning she said, "Mom, Can I go downstairs and all that other stuff?" All the while I'm feigning sleep and grunting, while inside I'm just splitting my sides. She just can't help herself. Those plans are a little more ambiguous, but she's still making them!

Don't you just love the way little minds work?