Wake Up

The last couple of weeks I’ve had a hard time waking up in the morning. Mostly because Grover and I have been really nailing our spooning game. Also, I’m exhausted.

As a result, my morning routine has been overlapping with the rest of the family.

Luca always wakes up early. His first order of business is to hug me. His second order of business is to try to get in a few rounds of video games before Diana busts him. I allow him to play video games because of his first order of business. He’ll then eat a bowl of cereal while watching videos of other people playing video games. After that it’s off to put on clothes and a daily refusal to brush his teeth. All in all, he’s incredibly manageable and adorable.

Elijah has to be out the door at 8am sharp. So, he sets his alarm for 7:40. Leaving him zero time to do anything but get yelled at by Diana. She’s usually 99% asleep for these battles, so they often sound like two drunks fighting over a half empty bottle of gin.

“Whyyy don you evr wake up when I ax?”

“I don wanna get uuuup.”

“You git uuup.”

“No, you git uuup.”

My anxiety skyrockets when Eli refuses to wake up. WHAT IF HE IS LATE FOR SCHOOL? He could get (pause for dramatic effect) yelled at! I would simply die if I ever got yelled at for being late for school.

I’ve taken it upon myself to wake Eli up in the am. My old technique was to simply yank his blankets off like a magician removing a table cloth from a full setting for six. But I could tell from his rage that this would most likely result in some terrible form of rebellion down the road like a nose ring or Alex P. Keaton style Republicanism.

I now have a new technique. I stand in the middle of his room and sing my Wake Up Song. It goes like this:

Get up, get up, get out of your bed.

Drag a comb across your rat’s nest head.

You’ve got to brush your teeth because you’ve got b-b.

But first of all you’ve got to go pee pee.

It’s not so much the lyrics that get him moving. It’s my atonal, tuneless melody. I don’t actually hit any notes. My melody lives in between notes. For a child with a near perfect singing voice, this is too much to stand. He runs from the room with his hands over his ears and occasionally leaps into Diana’s bed to hide.

At which point I serenade both of them. Which doesn’t do great things for my marriage, but she needs to get up too, dang it.

After I’ve irritated everyone, I head out for commute.