Morning people ~ a different breed

Allow me to start off by explaining, I am not a morning person.

When I wake up, there are cobwebs everywhere. The room is black and it feels just, well, wrong to get up. But my radio alarm clock tells me otherwise. I listen to the jibber jabber of traffic issues, some bad joke or bright happy song, and allow myself to morph into the land of the living. To wake up to an incessent buzzing would not be a good thing. Easy does it here.

I rise to the fragrance of my morning brew waiting for me. (thank goodness for timers on coffee makers!) With my eyes still shut, I shuffle into the hallway, feeling my way for the furnace switch (yeah, need to look into a timer for that too) and slowly make my way down the hallway and downstairs to open the doors where the cats hibernate for night. I then make that massive effort with sleepy legs getting upstairs and plunk myself in front of my laptop.

I pour myself a coffee and plunk myself down. Slowly, the brew does it's magic and the morning fog begins to lift.

It's only then, in about 30 minutes or so, I am ready for Cody.

Cody is not just a 9 yr old boy. He's a ray of sunlight. A puff of fresh air. Swirling good energy and lighting bolts radiate around him in the AM. I don't get it, but I like it. When I'm ready.

We have to leave the house by 8:05 AM. If I wake him up at 7:50, we'll STILL be on time, but I do aim for 7:30. The boy only requires 5 minutes to wake up. Amazing. He's ready for breakfast as soon as his eyes flick open.

Now at times he wakes up on his own early when I'm not ready. I've made breakfast and packed him last minute lunches many a times while in my sleepy stupor so it's not like I can't do it. I do it and often. But a good morning for me would be, I wake up on time (7:00 AM) and have time for the caffeine to kick in. Then lo and behold, I become that angel from happy land, and float into his room in annoying wake up song.

Today was such a day. The song on the radio that woke me up wouldn't leave my head. So I loafed into Cody's room to give him a dose of what he normally does to me. "TAKE ME AWAAAY.... TAKE ME AWAYYY..." I sing away and jump into his bed. Jenna the dog goes a little crazy when I sing (I'm not exactly sure why..) so an extra 100 lbs pounce on Cody's too small bed at this point.

I'm met with a few protests, but the show must go on. I start up breakfast and happily challenge him to see who's first, breakfast or him fully dressed. BOOM. Up he goes.

This is the part that simply amazes me. Cody is HAPPY in that morning fog. His eyes are still shut but his smile is plastered from ear to ear as he hops skips and jumps into the kitchen fully dressed. I'm greeted with, "I'M SOOO HUNGRY!" He's such an easy AM sell this boy.

I'm so grateful he isn't like me in that way. Now, before you think I have this angelic boy 24/7, there are some mornings where he isn't quite ready to be up in 5 min. That generally indicates to me to simply make his bedtime abit earlier, which I do. It's just about like an adjustment switch on him. You just have to know how far to turn the dial.

I love my happy happy boy in the AM! Natural caffeine I call it. I'm just very grateful that the unnatural caffeine is available for others just like me.

Cheers! (*gulp*)

Halloween candy be gone!

In my mouth, that is.

It's been a very long time since we've stocked any kind of chocolate in the house. During summer, I have the odd Dairy Milk for making s'mores, but generally, it's just not really a great idea.

For Cody and I are both addicted to chocolate in a baaaad way. If it's there, it's inhaled.

So naturally, with Halloween fast approaching, gee... I had to get some. Costco gave you a choice of three different bulk boxes of mini chocolate bars. Not wishing to worry about missing out on any of them, I just bought all three. There! I can sneak a Snickers AND Aero bar here and there.(did I say that out loud?)

I'm really finding that having all this chocolate in the house again to not be the best idea. No matter where I stash the boxes, you'll find Cody hovering around them. (and yes, of course they are open... they were ripped open on the way out of Costco before I even got to my truck, pathetic, YES) Cody is busy trying to justify why it's OK to have some for breakfast, right before bed, bring wad fulls to school 'for all his friends you know', you get the idea. Today when I picked him up from school, he got in the back seat and stated, "WHERE DID ALL THE WRAPPERS COME FROM? Hmmm, strange..." Guess I'd better check those early AM pockets a little closer tomorrow. I caught him on the road tonite with the whole box giving some away to Zach while playing basketball. Oy...

And then there's myself. Where is one box? Right beside the laptop I'm typing on. I'll count the empty wrappers... huh.. only three. I thought there'd be more. In fact, I KNOW I ate more than three. At least six. Maybe the dog is getting high on chocolate fumes from the wrappers, who knows. When there's something cool in the house to eat, generally all the animals hover around us salivating.

Worst part? I don't even like some of this stuff I'm scarfing down.

Well, I plan to give it away anyway. Good riddance! I'll be dumping all three boxes in a massive bowl with a sign politely explaining to take 2, while I take Cody around the neighbourhood.

And in exchange, we'll haul in an even better variety than what we started out with. Great. For our sake, I hope we detest what's coming our way. But I seriously doubt it...

Productive, CLOSED and hugs, all in one day

Weekdays seem to be days designated for high productivity. We get the kidlets off to school, go to work, come home, make dinner, make sure homework is done, the kiddie bedtime ritual, clean the house abit if time, do abit of renovating if my eyes can still stay open, then sit and blog. (ok, that last one maybe for a selected few...)

Ah, and then there's the school field trips you don't want to miss (that you REALLY don't want to get up so early for), trying to figure out if you have flowerbeds or weedbeds (and the confusion so overwhelming you just start calling them beds), your black truck turns a lovely shade of 10% grey (graphic designer kinda talk), your dog silently begs for a walk that would never end by means of staring at you ALL DAY LONG, on the list grows.

Today after school, Cody and I had plans to go pick out some pumpkins. He was soooo excited! Last year he slept with his pumpkin so I know this shopping venture meant alot to him. So off we go. Gitter done! Lots to do, so let's do it!

But first, I swerved into the local yokel hairdresser's. Cody needed a haircut. Cody protests loudly. Why kids don't like haircuts I'll never get. Wait till they get older.. it's called a DAY OFF of work. (for women's 4.5 hr appts anyway) I finally bribed Cody to get the hair deed done so off we go. We are smacked with a CLOSED sign. No.... I got my boy out of the truck. Don't they understand how difficult that was?!? Cody yelped for joy and RAN back to the truck. Drat.

Ok, next stop, pumpkin patch. Now we're talkin' Cody's language. It was a gorgeous sunny fall day to boot and I actually remembered my camera. We were all set! Flashbacks of last year's pumpkin hunt happily drifted through my mind... We drive into our favorite nearby place and quietly... pass... by... the... CLOSED... sign. It's like 3 days before Halloween and they aren't open to sell all those oodles of pumpkins they just have sitting outside in the open! (I give Yarrow credit. A Yarrow Pumpkin Stealer doesn't appear to be anywhere near a wanted poster anytime soon.)

Now we're heading home after not even going anywhere in the first place.

I didn't even THINK to head out of Yarrow for some reason. I like shopping local. And when local was closed, I just wanted to go home. So we did. With the promise of trying all this fun again Thursday after school.

Some days just aren't as productive as others. But that's ok too. Gives a person more time to play and enjoy each other. When cuddling in Cody's bed tonite, I gave him one of my lingering heartfelt bear hugs. He hugged back hard and said, "I LOVE hugs!" Me too buddy. Me too.

Doubt he'll feel the same come Haircut Thursday, but a mom can always dream...