Monday

This morning the wee one was up at 4:45 – IN THE AM. I drew breakfast duty but let Annie play in her crib for another 30 min or so until she started getting fussy. I rolled my feet to the floor and mumbled over and over ”It’s too early baby, it’s too early baby . . .”. I follow the same circuitous route through the darkened house each morning:

1) Dawg jumps up from his bed on the wife’s side and staggers down the hallway
2) I pick up one end of the dawg bed and drag it through the house behind the pooch whose nose is dragging an inch off the ground “It’s too early, it’s too early, baby.”
3) Down the hall, through the living room, through the dining room, through the kitchen
4) Punch the button on the coffee maker as I stumble by (if I set it up the previous evening) “Too early, too early . . .”
5) Through the family room where I drop the dawg bed while the beast heads out his dawggie door for his morning business
6) Back through the dining room, living room, hallway, to the nursery.

Some days I move the dawg bed, start the coffee, let the dawg out and make my way to the nursery before I even wake up. On those days walking back to the kitchen to find the coffee brewing is like finding money in the laundry.

The little one was in rare form this morning. Squealing and hooting and hollering with delight. Everything was hilarious! Life was grand! Can you believe it?! Another glorious day! After about 30 minutes of Annie’s O-dark-thirty celebration extravabonanza the wife was compelled to stumble out of bed just to see what in the world was going on. There I was at the computer quietly working away and there was Annabelle in her high chair laughing and jibber jabbering to herself at the top of her little lungs.

Annabelle did eventually quiet down and the wife fixed some left-over Cranberry-Orange loaf for breakfast. As the wife and I sat across from each other at the table in relative silence I looked up and said, “Monday”. She said, “Yeah”.

I took another slug of coffee . . .

“Here we go . . .”