So, we can just start by stating the obvious. The thing that everyone who knows me knows about me - I'm not a morning person. I need a little time to myself in order to make my peace with the fact that it's a new day; that in a few short minutes it is likely that chaos will turn my brain into some kind of cranky. My ideal morning - the coffee pot is set the night before, I can go from warm bed to warm yoga pants. I can turn on NPR in the kitchen and maybe read a few pages of something, or just look out the window at how pretty our backyard always is in the morning while I drink said coffee.
Also, in this ideal I am pleasant to the people I live with - maybe even nice.
It's my fantasy, I can do what I want with it!
By anybody's standards our mornings are a challenge.
2 working parents (at least within the next couple of weeks)
1 preschooler - going to preschool 5 mornings a week
1 breastfeeding infant
1 car
I spend almost an hour -- an hour! -- in the car almost every morning getting people to where they need to be. And everywhere we go is within 5 miles of our house.
How to get four people happily out the door to a minimum of two and soon likely four different locations with one car on time confounds me. Ok the part that confounds me is how we can get all that done without the three year old in tears, without having to send the 'sorry for being such an ass this morning' text to my husband at around 10:00, without snapping at everyone so that by the time I get to wherever I'm going I'm so exhausted and just downright irritated that I 1. feel like crap about how I handled myself and 2. I invariably want to start over.
Yes, I know that getting up earlier, all of us getting up earlier would probably make a difference but I think we'd still have that 20-30 minutes of trying to get Guthrie to move slightly faster than a turtle, the crap - did everyone get breakfast?, the oh- my work phone is in my pants pocket upstairs. And sleep is just still so precious, even though Laithe is sleeping for stretches that Guthrie didn't get to for at least a year. And getting up earlier means going to bed earlier, which means carving more time off our already very short evenings that we can spend together as a family.
Can you tell I'm writing this in the morning? That I'm still ever so cranky and whiny?
Obviously this morning was not a good one. It was not even PG-13 (where the adult can swear quietly under her breath and other family members don't hear it). And we all felt like crap when it was over.
So, what do you guys do? How do you make your mornings smoother or at least livable?
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3 comments:
Work mornings are my archnemisis.
I don't have any advice, just "I'm in the same boat minus 2 kids so I think you are wonder woman for being alive by afternoon!"
Hope your Tuesday perks up :)
Hahahahaha! My advice: carpool! The 2 mornings a week that someone picks up Zoe are wonderful. Yes, we still have the stress to get everyone dressed and fed but it buys me a bit more time. I thought John was going to walk/ride (his bike) to work? Or am I imagining that?
We don't always have great mornings many days of the week, but on the positive side they are SO MUCH BETTER than when our little bundle of sensitivity was born-early part of 4. One of the things I know about Mad is that if I laugh, she laughs. If I am calm, she is calm. If I make her laugh right away in the morning--whether it be by tickling her or making her clothes talk--I am a better person and she is too and we leave the house in a better place than other days.
Also, sometimes they just have to be pissed off and get their early-morning crap out, too. We can have the best ever morning going & Mad will have a little anxiety sneak in & the whole thing will turn to sh*t. It's just how they are. :)
You are awesome & you know all these things. But it's helpful for me to write them. So thanks!
Laithe is so flippin' cute!!!!
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