Morning from HELL

Daughter had no school yesterday. Parent/teacher conferences. The good news is that she is going to, drumroll please, KINDERGARTEN next year! She is so excited to wear the Catholic schoolgirl uniform (man that just looks wrong, thanks a bunch SNL). The dad is a little upset that was even a question, after all, she is brilliant. At least precocious.

The truth is that daughter is very bright, unfortunately she is also extremely, um, willful. If she wants something, if she wants to learn something, do something, doesn’t matter what, she’ll learn how. If she couldn’t give a flying crap, well, good luck. Unfortunately she is not totally mesmerized with the art of reading, or even learning her letters. Why should she? She wants a sign read? Ask a brother. She wants a story read? Ask a brother. No need to do for yourself if you have brothers.

On the other hand, climbing trees, riding bikes, making coffee, these are all things she can do because, God forbid, she should be left behind when the brothers do those things. These ready-for-Kindergarten things really need to be kept in the perspective of the child involved. Luckily teacher noticed this about daughter, and while daughter is still behind on the whole reading-by-age-four thing, teacher is confident that by the end of summer she’ll be doing just fine. Because teacher lives down the street and plans to work with daughter. I feel incredibly flattered teacher has taken a shine to daughter, here I thought it was just me & the dad thinking she was great. But it’s contagious.

Lest anyone out there are coming away from this thinking daughter is just stunningly wonderful, let me sum up my stunningly horrid morning. I’m not a morning person. However, middle child must be up by 6:30 to catch the 6:55 bus. He is able to do this, in this short of a time, by 1) showering the night before, 2) eating breakfast at school and 3) the bus stops at our house. There are serious benefits to living in subrural North Carolina. Anyway, I get middle child up at 6:30. Though the child is almost 14, he cannot wake up without the mommy yelling “HEY GET UP” in his ear. Squareboy, who shares a room with middle child, does not wake up to this.

Once middle child is actually sitting up and blinking confusedly at the bright light in his eyes, he’s on the top bunk, near the light, I stumble back to bed till my “real” wake-up time… 7:00 a.m. This morning I was wide awake for some reason and did some laundry, puttered around, and then went to the bathroom. At some point the 7:00 a.m. alarm went off, which daughter turned off. Shortly thereafter I layed back down for a minute before the alarm went off. Which, of course, it already had. I wound up jumping out of bed, after a nightmare of being late, go figure, at 8:00 a.m. And tried to get daughter up.

Daughter reacts to bright lights in eyes by scooting to the footend of the bed and curling any & all blankets around her and squealing “No! Bright Light!” I ignored her briefly and went to get squareboy, only to find him up, dressed and with his lunch packed. Two sandwiches, a family-size bag of chex mix, two drinks, two fruit snacks and some carrots. He was planning on being hungry at lunch (the kid is 8. Eight-year-olds do not, ever, eat that much in one sitting). I let him take it all to school because 1) we were late, 2) he’d packed his own lunch and 3) he’d packed his own lunch!

Back to daughter, still squealing. I dress her. Squealing progressed to screaming. Wrong pants. Itchy shirt. The socks don’t match. WTH?!?! She even slept in an hour. More stuff happened, what it boils down to is that she screamed, squealed, whined from 8:00 a.m., until I dropped her off at school at 8:42 a.m.; where Roman told her “you’re lucky you’re late you missed chapel.” Daughter nodded her head, solemnly agreeing, she’s mad at Jesus for making Gorilla’s, flashed me the cheesiest grin because her boyfriend had talked to her and then skipped off to class.