Waking Up

Most mornings things go like this at our house...I get up early and go to the gym to exercise. Around 6:30 am our oldest wakes up, makes his bed, gets dressed and goes downstairs to make his breakfast. Usually he's already practicing the piano by the time I come home from working out around 7am. He's a very responsible kid. He's not particularly happy in the morning, but knows what's expected of him and does it. I'm very grateful he's so good.

Then around 7:15 or 7:30, down rolls our 2nd child. Still in his jammies, usually groggy, not happy. He runs to the couch, jumps on and buries his head under the back cushion. I coax him out and remind him that he has school and needs to get moving. He'll slowly get his breakfast (or proudly make himself oatmeal) and then slowly eats it. Then comes the hard part...getting dressed. It takes him a while to get up the stamina to go back upstairs, get dressed and make his bed. I've told him many times, just get dressed and make your bed before you come down and then you don't have to go up again. I nearly always have to send him up another time after that to put on socks and brush his teeth. He's not a morning person. He gets that from his daddy. It almost makes you feel sorry for him because he looks so sad to be awake.

Then, around 8, our little girl wakes up. She's usually quite happy and snuggly and cheerful in the morning. Most of the time, she'll just knock on the wall by her bed above her head (which connects to our bathroom wall), to let us know she's waking up. Often, I'll knock the same rhythm back to her from my side where I'm getting ready for the day. Then finally she'll come in our room laughing...hair all a mess. I love her cheerful morning face.

So, the other day, she did something out of the routine. We were actually all upstairs...she in bed, us in our room getting dressed, the boys in their room picking up dirty clothes. All of the sudden we hear...

"COCK-A-DOODLE-DOO! COCK-A-DOODLE-DOO!"

The rest of us converge on her room and peek in, slowly opening the door. There we found her, covered in her blankets, hiding, waiting for us to discover her. We could all hear her giggling under the covers. Even our little groggy guy couldn't help but laugh along. As we quietly walked in, she threw back the covers and said "BOO!" All of us had a great laugh together. She made our day.


So after having family prayer right there in her room that morning, we were off to school, work, etc. and were all happy. Thank you, little Rooster!