Early

Are you an early person? I am most decidedly not — but I'm starting to recognize that for the next decade or so (until my kid(s) are old enough to get up and make themselves breakfast on Saturday morning*), I'll have to be one, like it or not. 

I've actually started appreciating that early morning time (rather than just dreading it), because it feels so kick-ass to have already accomplished a million (yes, a million; I am not exaggerating in the slightest) things by 9am, when my old** self would have just been getting up.

The best early mornings are still the ones when we all get up, together as a fam, and do something fun like make pancakes or throw Leo pieces of trash that he can deliver to the recycle bin and then bring back to us proudly in an endless loop. But it's a work-in-progress, that's for sure. When I see families all dressed and raring to go at the coffee shop at 7:30am, and I'm awake but I look like I crawled out of a sewer, I'm always impressed. Will we get there? That remains to be seen.

Are you an early person? Or does getting up before 8am make you cringe and cling to your pillow like a life raft?

*Friends with kids older than ours have informed us that the greatest day of your lives is not your children's graduation or the birth of a grandchild — it's the one when your oldest kid learns how to make breakfast for the younger one(s).

**springier, sprightlier, less groggy and able to work a toaster

PHOTO CAPTION: Swim!