A Day in the Life

A typical Davidson morning:

3:30 a.m.: Noah cracks my bedroom door open and peeks in. Door opens wider, he comes up to my bed and says, “Mom? Can I cuddle with you for a little while?” More often than not, I mumble something unintelligible as he crawls into bed next to me.

3:32 a.m.: Noah sits straight up in bed and whispers, “Oh! I forgot something!”, goes back to his room and gets some random toy, (this week its been the little table-top bead maze and a Backyardigans book), then climbs back into bed with me.

3:49, 4:17, 4:32, and other random moments: I’m startled awake by a little elbow digging into my back, or my pillow being snatched away from underneath my head. Fitful sleep ensues, but I'm just too tired to drag the little pillow thief back to his own bed.

5:30 a.m.: Alarm goes off. I ignore it and/or stare at it in disbelief. Noah hits the snooze button.

5:39 a.m.: Alarm goes off again. Noah hits the snooze before I even have time to register it.

5:48 a.m.: Alarm goes off again. Noah hits the snooze button.

5:57 a.m.: Alarm goes off again. Noah hits the snooze button.

6:06 a.m.: Alarm goes off again. Noah hits the snooze button. This time I’m starting to wake up a bit.

6:09 a.m.: I finally drag myself out of bed to the shower.

6:19 a.m.: I’m showered and have dug something out of the perpetual un-put-away clean laundry pile on the couch in my bedroom to wear to work. Noah is awake and waiting for me to head downstairs. He has way more energy than should be humanly possible. We head into the boys’ room to wake Travis up.

6:23 a.m.: I’m still convincing Travis to get out of bed. He’s complaining that he’s still tired, or that his leg hurts, or something like that. I tell him that I’m going to go wake up Sophie, and he shoots out of bed like a rocket so that he can beat Noah to opening up Sophie’s door. Noah then melts into a pile on the floor, screaming “I WANTED TO OPEN THE DOOR!”, and I step over him into Sophie’s room. Sophie, who is already awake and lying quietly in bed, glances at me out of the corner of her eye and then grabs some nearby stuffed animal or blanket to cover her face with and pretend she’s not there. I say, “where’s Sophie?!?” a couple times until she pops her head out and giggles with glee.

6:27 a.m.: The whole lot of us stumble downstairs and I toss some breakfast in front of them. They scarf it down. Meanwhile I throw together Travis’s lunch of PB&J and goldfish crackers. Noah insists on placing the sandwich inside the lunch box. I load up Travis’s backpack with lunchbox, snow pants, mittens, shoes, and folder. It’s stuffed full and practically too heavy for me to carry.

6:37 a.m.: I head over to the love seat where I laid all their clothes out the night before, and call for Sophie to come over and get dressed while the boys go potty. Sophie takes two or three deliberate steps towards me and then turns tail and runs away, screeching with delight. I holler at her that this is NOT A GAME, get over here so I can change your diaper and put your socks on! She comes over when she hears there are socks involved. She loves socks.

6:45 a.m.: I finally have Sophie dressed. She sits off to the side and tries to put Noah’s socks on over her own socks while I call for the boys to come in and get dressed. I tell Travis he has until I count to ten to get each item of clothing on. He starts to get a little frantic when I start counting and puts on his new underwear over his old underwear. I don’t realize it until I’m at “nine”, point it out to him, and then Travis panics and asks if that counts or will I please start over so he can try again? Meanwhile I am trying to get Noah to step into his underwear, which he does only after pretending to “miss” three times with each leg. I toss Travis his pants and start counting again, and finally manage to subdue Noah enough to get pants on him as well. When they’re finally both dressed I start looking frantically for their socks, which have mysteriously disappeared. Oh, that’s right, Sophie was putting on an extra pair and she also managed to hide the other pair inside of my boot, or the bucket of hats, or the dog cage.

6:55 a.m.: Everyone is dressed and ordered to the shoe bench for boot adornment. Travis gets his boots on in seconds flat. Snow boots are still a novelty to him at this point in the season, so he’s excited about it. Noah screams at the top of his lungs, “I CAN DO IT MYSELF! I WANTED TO BEAT TRAVIS!”. I grab a boot and prepare to shove it on his foot while he flails his leg around in defiance. Finally catch the foot and zip on his boot. Grab for the other boot but it turns out Sophie has it on her own foot. I yank it off and toss her her own boots, which she proceeds to pull on the wrong feet and stomp around in accomplishment.

7:01 a.m.: I am passing out hats and coats, only to find the zipper is missing on Travis’s coat and Noah’s favorite hat is MIA. He wants to wear Sophie’s pink polka-dotted hat. Fine.

7:03 a.m.: Everyone is bundled up so we head out to the car. I have to hold on to Sophie’s hood like a leash because otherwise she makes a beeline for the deepest piles of snow. Unfailingly she picks up a handful of snow for eating. Travis gets himself into the car, and I open the door for Noah. He climbs in, but then I have to squeeze Sophie in over the top of him because her seat is in the middle. She’s like a puffy marshmallow with her giant coat. I try to squeeze her in the car seat, which consists of regularly re-squishing her puffy coat so I can get her fastened. Buckle up the boys and we finally hit the road.

7:18 a.m.: Arrive at ya-ya’s. Unload Noah and Sophie. Noah heads straight for the bench where his granola bar and milk are waiting for him. He insists on giving Sophie’s granola bar to her. I blow them each a kiss and rush out the door.

7:25 a.m.: Arrive at Travis’s school. Unbuckle, walk him in, quick hug and kiss, and off he goes.

7:31 a.m.: On the road to work. Realize I haven’t put on deodorant or makeup. Grab each out of my workout bag and apply while driving down the road.

7:36 a.m.: Arrive at work. Whew. A chance to relax.

P.S. I don’t do this every day. Twice a week I have my morning workout, and I’m out the door before the rest of the house wakes up. On those days, you can substitute Ben for me in the above story. All other details remain about the same, aside from the over-the-road make-up application.