The other morning, I went to my daughter's room to wake her up. She was dead asleep, nestled into her quilts. I spoke her name, and instantly she was upright, her dark eyes darting with merriment. She even did this nutty snap-that-turns-into-a-finger-gun thing, like someone warming up the crowd at the Voulez Vous Lounge in Eureka Springs, AR : "Hey, there, Mama-jama! No sleepyheads here! How ya doing this beautiful A in the M? Don't forget to tip your waitress!"
Where we got her was, see, one day this giant seed pod drifted out of the sky and into the back yard, and when we opened it up, she was inside, wide awake. The only thing we can guess is that she is a foundling from another race, one whose ways are foreign, whose body chemistry is strange, whose way of looking at the world is utterly opposite to everything familiar to me. Yes, my daughter is a Morning Person.
Thank goodness we have at least one of these in the house. We adults are pretty definitively Night People, and this means that when the alarm goes off at half-past-death o'clock, we are faced with what seems like a monstrously cruel and impossible task: getting out of bed.
Once I'm up, I'm fine. I seize the moment, I swallow the frog, I grab the bull by the horns, and so on. But all those frogs and bulls are on the other side of the cold, cold room, and I am in my nice, warm bed. It's not just that it's hard to get out of bed. It feels like it's actually wrong, an offence against decency, like scribbling on a Botticelli or throwing rocks at swans. There's something so beautiful going on here. You'd have to have a heart of stone to ruin it on purpose.
Luckily, I have helpers. Here are some of the ways they assist me each morning:
Making the bed a place of torment and misery. The baby is especially good at this. She sleeps in her own crib, and is not allowed in our bed until 6 a.m. She gets around this rule by -- I don't know how. She just flies into the bed and attaches herself to me like a magnet. At first, it's warm and snoogily and wonderful, straight out of a La Leche League flyer. But once she gets rid of that terrible empty feeling her tummy, she wants to keep nursing, but she also wants to amuse herself. She does this by using her prehensile toes for evil. Now, this is a kid who's so new at walking that she has to run, because if she stops, she'll tip over. This is someone who sometimes accidentally feeds a spoonful of applesauce into her ear. Not the most dexterous or agile person in the world. And yet she has this unerring ability to zero in on the most tender areas, lock on, and twist. Monster! Getting up, getting up!
Making the non-bed areas of the house an emergency zone, so that consequences for not getting out of bed too horrible to contemplate. The preschool kids are especially good at this one. They aren't especially cheerful in the morning, and goodness knows nobody asked them to get up. But they shuffle down the stairs in their saggy pajamas bright and early and start right in on their busy campaign of terror. "Mama," they call, "Why is 'juice' spelled with a 'A-M-M-O-N-I-A?'" Or if they are being especially considerate, I will hear, "NO! NO! DON'T TELL HER! HERE, YOU CAN BITE MY NECK!"
Being really, really good about it. Say the alarm clock went off 25 minutes ago, and before the day has even begun, I'm already behind. Instead of making coffee and inspecting lunches and signing permission slips and brushing hair and locating mittens and pouring milk and administering pep talks, I'm just lying there like a moth-eaten bear pelt, thinking about how unreasonable it is that someone like me, who never wanted anything out of life except a little bit of damn sleep once in a while, like maybe on my birthday, if that's not too much to ask (not that it's actually my birthday, but it wouldn't make a bit of difference if it were), and just look at all the responsibilities I have, and I guess it's just out of the question for anybody but me to ever lift a finger . . .
. . . and then I hear a diffident knock on the door, and my oldest girl whispers, "Mama? Mama? Did you want me to warm up the car?"
Okay. Getting up now. Somebody pour me a mug of ammonia.
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Thank you for making me chortle out loud!
Classic.
Ahhhh…..thanks for the memories! My kids would head to our bed at such ungodly hours in the morning. My son would get my glasses, shove them upsidedown on my face, and say “gashis on, gashis on”. The good news is, when you are in your 50’s, you’l be able to sleep in the morning. But when they come home from college to visit, you won’t be able to go to sleep at night until they come back home from going out with their friends! Then you can’t wait for them to get back to their dorm!
Go ahead. Bite my neck.
At least I know to not sip any liquids while reading your column.*
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*Things I learned the hard way.
Yeah, this is definitely one of your top-best columns. One for the books!
Have you been spying on me, Simcha?
At my age getting up in the morning is becoming an ordeal. After coffee and a Tylenol I am more or less ready for the day’s activities.
Central heating helps motivate getting out of bed.Lack of central heating necessitates getting up & feeding the woodstove or facing the consequences.
You know this is why some of us homeschool, right? If I had to get my kids to school on time, I’d be that bad mom who was always showing up late with partially groomed, unbreakfasted children. Heck, I’m STILL that Mom.
The weird thing is, I was a morning person before I got woken up every 1.5 hours for a decade. And if I don’t have to get my kids out the door, I actually show up on time…....
It IS wrong to climb out of that nest of warmth & softness, especially in winter, when the bed includes down and flannel. I am very glad I finished my cocoa before I read this!
Then there is the whole snow ball effect if the momma don’t get up first.
Ugh! I did that this morning and I’m still paying the price…..
Now where’s my ammonia!
Deirdre Mundy,
My youngest is now 19 but I still have the occasional nightmare about the schoolbus arriving & nobody’s dressed for school, no lunches packed.Homeschooling rocks in that respect…
I’ve often joked with my friends that I don’t know if I’ve ever had a hangover because I feel like that EVERY morning. With my current boss it’s great in that she is very lax about when I arrive so long as I work 8 hours - terrible in that I’m often here until very, VERY late at night. Perhaps this is why the good Lord has not blessed me with a husband/kids - I need some energy to survive the day.
This was hilarious - THANK YOU :)
I howled with laughter and my husband came in for a reading. Simcha, you are simply a great writer. I love it all.
Don’t know how this would work for Simcha, but it’s certainly helped me. I’ve loathed and despised chilly early mornings my whole life so now I do my best to create a nice atmosphere that will help me wake up. My alarm clock is also a radio so that I wake up to music in the morning rather than a harsh buzzer. I head to the kitchen, turn on lots of lights so it’s bright and cheery and turn on classical music. Then I get coffee and breakfast going. No matter how early it is I try to give myself an extra half hour so I can sit and eat my breakfast at a reasonable pace and read the news on the Internet.
I’m single, no kids so this is easier for me than a mom of 9…but trust me on this part, lots of light and some nice music in the morning will make a world of difference for anyone.
Alas, in our family of five, four are morning people - guess who drew the short stick? Last week I was awoken at 6:30 in the morning, by the 3.5 year old wearing a Captain America costume that was two sizes too small (complete with mask/hat) over his pajamas, rocking his paper jams guitar at maximum volume and serenading me to a rousing rendition of “Turning Japanese.”
Dear God,
Thank you for making other weird families just as weird as we are. Please prepare this nice abused mother for the teenagers who will stagger around on the roof in the middle of the night because they have lost their keys and are trying to break in.
Snoogly babies have never looked so good.
I am tempted to be a quasi heretic and shoot down one of those classic Catholic maxims about the proper beginning of one’s day.
It seems that some sadist (who has never had snoogily baby) once said that the most important “skirmish” to be fought, is the *first* of the day: When the alarm sounds, we must *jump* out of bed. I too feel inclined to twist some tender monk flesh over that one!
We have TWO alarms: the first to rouse us from the dead and the second to make sure we didn’t fall back asleep after waking each other up in a worthy manner.
Tears in my eyes as I’m howling with laughter. I’m sharing this one.
I used to suffer from horrible insomnia as a child, and as a teenager, and young adult. I’m talking the kind where you lay in bed hearing the clock downstairs chime out midnight, 1 am, 2 am, and so forth. Then I had children, and my brain figured out that it had better fall asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow, because who knew WHEN we’d get another chance to sleep? I went from tossing and turning and envying my husband’s ability to fall asleep in two minutes to falling asleep as fast as possible. Just another benefit of having kids!
I’m a morning person. I set my alarm for 6:15 - fifteen minutes before I’m supposed to get my daughter up for an early school bus but the alarm rarely needs to go off as I’m generally already up doing a load of wash. I will say that I need my sleep so when I’ve only got five hours under my belt I can be grouchy (although I still rarely oversleep). It’s not that I’m happy in the morning - I just can’t really stay in bed once I’m awake. And I’ve found morning contains my most productive hours. My boys will generally start waking up an hour or so after me but I’ve already got their lunches made and their uniforms lined up.
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I’ve definitely converted my husband who used to be a night owl. Now he’s on the elliptical by 6:30 every morning. I can’t tell about our kids. The teens have a terrible time waking up but I think my daughter is going to be a morning person like her mother. Based on his early years, I’d have said my teenage son was going to be too. But these days I wake him up at 7:30 and again at 7:45 and one more time at 7:55 and then we’re out the door by 8:02 every morning. The rest of the boys still bound out of bed with big smiles on their faces somewhere between 7:00 and 7:15 most mornings. We’ll see if that changes once they hit puberty.
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This may all sound like one big brag but if I’m not in bed by 9 pm, I’m grouchy, angry, and resentful. And most nights I’m in there by 8, which is just as well because by 8pm I’m downright stupid. I like to watch an hour or so of TV with my husband (who usually comes to bed at 9) before going to sleep. And if my two youngest boys aren’t in bed by 7:30 there is fighting, crying, and wailing in the morning.
“This is someone who sometimes accidentally feeds a spoonful of applesauce into her ear.”—col (chortle out loud)
I am a nightowl surrounded by morning people. I have solved half of the dilemma by doing every imaginable task the night before. If the house is up to snuff, things laid out, to-do list ready (because I can’t think until mid-afternoon, so without it done at night, I have to wait until then to figure out how to use my time), etc., I stand a chance at not being Monster Mom. Of course, the nights I stay up later than usual are almost without fail the days the kids get up earlier than usual. What is that? I’ve actually kept track, and it’s really happening.
Simcha, thanks for this! I love the candor!
We have ancient radiator heat, keep it ridiculously low to save a few pennies, and have additionally been keeping it *even lower* because the pipes in the basement are leaking and I can’t pay for a plumber to come, especially not before I get that unmentionable stuff out of the room where the leak is.
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So, anyway, I hear that pain. That pain of a 30-degree morning and a 50-degree house and a warm bed you have to leave. I have been so desperate about it lately I have even considered homeschooling again, just so I don’t have to get up.
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What does get me up is my husband yelling at the kids to stop making trouble, which of course they are.
**Disclaimer: yes I know homeschoolers get up, and keep schedules.
If you were as blessed as my wife, you would be married to a man who is not just a morning person, but someone who bounces out of the bed like Tigger in the morning, runs back to the bed and jumps on top of you, saying something to the effect of, “c’mon shnookums, time to wake up and stretch those bones, stretch those bones,” before trailing off into a pre-dawn serenade of “them bones, them bones, them drrryyyy bones.” Then it would be like every day is your birthday.
Awesome. I have the active baby in the mornings, who crawls all over and the 2 and half year old who is the morning person. I’m usually get up because the toddler thinks it’s great fun to lay on the baby to keep her from crawling…
OK….I just have to know how a writer in new Hampshire threw in a line about a bar in Eureka Springs, AR. What gives? I have been there, lovely town, great Catholic Church too.
@AnnaLisa:
Your comment reminds me of a line from one of the Brother Cadfael Mysteries:
<the bell rings for Matins>
Brother Jerome: Brother Cadfael, are you awake?
Brother Cadfael: No, but I am out of bed.
Our three kiddos (4,4, and almost 3) have recently discovered how to wake up and go potty on their own. Now we have to teach them not to knock on the door if there’s no light coming from underneath it…
Posted by Mark on Tuesday, Feb 26, 2013 4:12 PM (EST):
OK….I just have to know how a writer in new Hampshire threw in a line about a bar in Eureka Springs, AR.”
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And I was wondering how a bar in AR got a French name….
:)
I keep my thyroid meds on my night stand and when the baby wakes up around 5am I take them, so hopefully by 8am they kick in. During some very bad spouts of hypothyroidism, I kept a coffee pot on my night stand that had the auto program. I would wake up to the sound of perking and the smell of coffee. I poured myself a cup and sat in bed to wake up. I don’t know if I go out of bed any sooner, but it was so much more pleasant than the sound of the alarm clock. I def woke up happier.
So. awesome. Thank you, Simcha!
I’m there with ya, minus 6 kids. it’s funny, i’ve been sleep deprived for months, and finally monday i woke up and decided this is just how life is now and I need to cope with being tired and not having basic human needs met because there’s no end in sight and I need to stop fighting it because God is asking if of me. That was the first day in a long time all 3 kids took a nap at the same time. I got REST. Praise God, it comes when you finally surrender.
A day without ammonia is like a day without sunshine!
My problem is the dark. I can’t get up in the dark. It’s physically painful.
Blogger Elizabeth Esther gets up at 5 AM to work out (!!!!!!!) and has breakfast with the kids- I can’t wake up well much earlier than 6:30 but it has inspired me to have breakfast on the table at 7 sharp so we can share a meal together- even if it is rice krispies…our schedule only allows for about 2 dinners together a week during my teaching semester and this was really bothering me…so it is a solution for me and I am so NOT a morning person
about little kids and the potty- when my kids were newly potty trained at night- I would keep a baby potty in their room- so, if they woke up at 6 to go, they would go back to sleep instead of wandering around the house…also BLACK OUT BLINDS
maybe this was weird- but it gave me another half hour of sleep
Simcha,
Enough truth in this column to provoke absolute hilarity.
Thank you.
After the children all reach school age - maybe 15 or 20 years from now - you’ll be able to go back to bed (or back to sleep) after the last one leaves.
I haven’t tried ammonia in place of coffee - does it work?
TeaPot562
This morning I was awakened by the combined efforts of the 4, 3, and 2 year old, who were ALL chanting TIME TO GET UP, MAMA! while in my bed. It actually was time to get up, by any reasonable standard, but I, foolishly, had stayed up far too late for a person in my large and pregnant condition, eating ice cream and watching a few too many episodes of Community with their father, who actually IS a morning person and who I blame completely for their odd ideas about waking up and hitting the ground running. *yawn*
That reminds me of when my family went camping one year on Memorial day weekend. Grandpa was sitting by the fire, and all the guys were getting ready for fishing. Then my sister, well known for the comment ” I may rise, but I won’t shine!” walks out of the tent all smiles, and looking for her life jacket and fishing pole. Grandpa then commented to my dad that it was “Miracle Sunday”. My dad, not aware of any liturgical day with said name, asked why it was Miracle Sunday. Grandpa replied, “Annie woke up with a smile on her face!” We still laugh pretty hard about that story years later.
Great, just awesome! I was laughing out loud as my 17 YO daughter glanced with pity at her “cute” crazy mom.
What a great post!!! I, somehow, inexplicably, ended up with a houseful of morning people. People who pop out of bed in the wee hours of the morning like toast from a toaster. The 13yo gets up at 4:30am—voluntarily. I had to talk him down from 4:00am. The good news? Because we homeschool, nearly all of our work is done by 11am. But, I’ll tell ya, morning was a TERRIFYING place around here when the oldest was 5, and I had a 3yo who literally ate everything that wasn’t sealed away in a kryptonite box (white out, household plants, Desitin, etc), a 1yo who could climb every baby gate ever invented (like spiderman—and had the callouses between his toes to prove it), and an infant in our bed. I don’t think I shut my eyes for the next 5 years.
So my baby isn’t the only one who makes the bed a place of torment! He uses his fingernails on me and usually reserves kicking for my husband. The cuddling is nice, but since he insists on being practically on top of me I invariably end up on the extreme edge of the bed every morning. Thanks for the laughs as always!
A wake-up buddy. My life was revolutionized by my wake-up buddy. When we’re totally “in it” *together* with a partner in suffering… most of the suffering just somehow evaporates..
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Hot showers at 6:15 are like a miracle.
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My inner free spirit cringes to admit this, but setting out clothing, roasting sandwich meat, and making lunches the night before does wonders!
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@ 6:48 My husband turns the lights on for the kindergarten and gradeschooler, wakes the middle school and high schooler, and we take turns loading the french press and put fresh water in the kettle.
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By the time we get back from Mass, we’ve said the rosary, the little kids are dressed and eating, the big kids have gotten the kettle going, and six kids (two car-pooling cousins) are almost ready to get into the car, to go to three schools, which are on the way to hubby’s work!
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That’s about when it gets quiet, I thank God the “baby” is still sleeping, I settle in for some coffee and blissfully read things like THIS which further brighten my day:)!
Oh, teenagers who climb onto the roof and try to break in! That may or may not be better than throwing something through the garage window because of a forgotten key. Or forgetting to open said garage door before backing the car out.
“An offense against decency” - that is EXACTLY how I feel about getting out of bed in the morning! Amen, sister…
My DH and oldest boy are both morning people. I don’t know why, but I firmly believe it’s how God made them. God has a sense of humor… How anyone can be awake, dancing & singing, with a great big grin and looking for cereal when it is 5 a.m. is beyond my comprehension. I have adapted to getting up early, and have accepted that life is meant to be full of pain and suffering in some way… but it still can’t motivate me to go to bed any earlier! Night Owl: 0, Morning Lark: 8500 points and counting…
Half-past-death o’clock. Love it! I’ll be using that one. It sounds so much lovelier than my husband’s ‘butt crack of dawn’. Yep, a charmer for sure. ;-). Simcha, you rock my dear!
I’m a morning person, and let me tell you it’s not easy. Society seems to be run for the night owls, and we morning people are stuck with people who are all chipper and bright eyed at 10:00 pm while all we want to do is go to bed. Don’t even mention Midnight Mass! If only they’d have it at 4:00 am.
What a HOOT!
Oh, and WHEN did you go to the Voulez Vous Lounge in Eureka Springs?
Call me next time, and I’ll meet you to do some gallery-gawkin’.
Heehee…
QB
oh, and Kathleen and Mark:
They’s plenty o’ OuiOui French Acadians down here in Y’all country!
nyuknyuk…not to mention a few Nor’Easterners escaping the cold…
Come OWN Down Y’all!
queenieB,
Thanks for explaining.I’d like to visit Ark. someday, it looks lovely, but for me it would involve coming on UP, instead of coming on DOWN.
Thanks for the invite.
:)
This has nothing to do with Tuesday’s post but I came across a great site for my students about electing a pope. I thought I would share:
http://education.dublindiocese.ie/2013/02/11/pope/
Oh @Ellen - how wrong you are!
The world is run by morning people. Who else invented going to work at 8:00 IN THE MORNING! and staying there during the most enjoyable, sun shiny parts of the day?
And closing stores just when people get off work?
Morning people. Morning people are responsible for these travesties.
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They think they get to run the world just because they wake up first! Bah!
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I once had a co-worker who would complain about her thoughtless sister-in-law who calls at 9:00pm just as she herself is getting ready for bed and too tired to talk. (I’m thinking, who goes to bed so EARLY?!)
Then I asked her, do you call your SIL before 9:00AM?
Well, yeah.
Well, I think she’s getting back at you!
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My friends and family know not to talk to me before 9:00AM - I may be out of bed, but I’m not awake - and I’m usually not pleasant! Also, I’m not a coffee drinker, so even that doesn’t help!
Somebody told me many years ago that there are two sorts of Christians in the world (often, but not exclusively divided as “parents” and “children”): 1. The sort of Christians who wake up and say, “Good Morning, Lord!”; and 2. The sort that wake up and say, “Oh, Lord, it’s morning!” I know where I and DD2 fall on that spectrum. DH and DD1 are the chipper birds, bless their hearts. The Spirit is willing, but the flesh is asleep… Thanks for the laugh, Simcha!
Heck, I don’t have kids and I’m laughing!
Hilarious!!
Nothing wakes you up quite like the smell of motrin on your bed. Btw a 2 year old can drink a bottle of concentrated motrin without dying. That’s how we learned to not trust the child safety caps.
A solution to the phone call thing is to have a loved one in a foreign country. My family lives in Korea ... so our weekly “phone date” is 8:30 in the morning for me, 10:30 at night for my mother. When we lived in similar timezones it was almost impossible to find a phone time when we were both free and awake!
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Me, I’m kind of a morning-and-evening person. I am fine at 7 a.m., fine at 9 p.m., but it is hard to be alive at 1 p.m. Why do they not make work schedules that accommodate this? And why, oh why, did my toddler give up his nap at 18 months???
Eau de memories, Simcha! lol Thanks for this. Am a 73-yr-old Mom/Nana & can relate to many of your (& commenters, too) experiences. A morning person, I’d wake my four kids by sweetly singing, “Good morning to you, good morning to you; we’re all in our places with sunshiny faces. Oh this is the waaaay to start a new day!” Then add (in my best drill sergeant voice), “Outta those sheets & on yer feets, let’s hit those streets a-runnin’!!” They’d tumble out just to shut me up. lol Thanks again!
Simcha, you’re a gem!
You should watch an episode of Wallace and Grommit. That will give you some ideas.
Oh, how I wish I could ‘like’ some of these comments!
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