Girl’s Life

I never thought that I would come to really love and appreciate mornings. But these days, well, sometimes I do.

Sophia wakes up early a lot. A. Lot. The kid has the weirdest internal clock. One morning she’ll be up at 5:30 and the next day she’s sleeping in (!) until 8:00. Isn’t it funny that once you become a parent, not waking up until the 8 o’clock hour is considered sleeping in? Man, I need to start going to bed earlier.

Anyway, today was one of those “rise with the dawn” mornings for the kiddo. Normally Chris or I try to trick her into coming into bed with us for a few more minutes of sleep. We gave up on the nonsensical early-morning arguing about whose turn it is to actually get up and entertain her long ago and have taken to stacking piles of board books, stuffed animals and stickers on the nightstand for quick access to easy distraction on days when we’re trying to catch a few more minutes of sleep and neither of us has eyes that will function yet. This usually buys us about 10-20 minutes max while Sophia plays, on good days, quietly at the foot of the bed, and on bad days, playing bongos on my forehead with one hand while she sticks stubby fingers into various openings on my head with the other. It’s never good sleep. It’s actually never usually even sleep. But, at that hour, the closed-eye “rest” we are convincing ourselves that we’re getting is priceless.

Today, however, was not one of those days that I had to beg and plead and offer my daughter thousands of dollars for “just 5 more minutes, please.”

Today was beautiful and peaceful. Sophia stirred pretty early again, and Chris brought her in to snuggle with me. She wrapped herself up into me — all legs and arms and hair and sweat. It was perfection. We laid there in spoony sleep forever. A half hour went by, then an hour. Finally Chris came in — laughing at the toddler/mommy tangle in front of him — to give me one last wake-up call for work so I wouldn’t be late. I would have slept there all day. It was seriously the best sleep I’ve gotten in weeks.

So yeah, sometimes I like mornings. But usually only when there’s snuggly sleep involved.