Wednesday, August 02, 2006

Truth #1: Unschooling can be embarrassing

We have guests for a few days. I love having guests but here's the problem with this particular mix of ours and theirs. Ours typically go to bed at 8pm, maybe 9pm at the latest. Why, you ask?? Am I totally insane? Yes, go ahead and berate me and tell me that the later they go to bed, the later they sleep in. Not. My. Kids.

My children will wake at quarter past the crack of dawn *no matter when they go to bed*. Don't worry - they make up for it with extreme crabiness throughout the day until they get to sleep earlier the next night. Our guests (including a 3 and 6yr old) stayed up until 1am this morning. Of course, being a great hostess, I stayed up with them and watched Sense and Sensibilities (one of my favorites that I just can't say 'no' to). Might not seem like a huge deal but let me explain my morning more thoroughly...

After a completely refreshing 4.5 hours of sleep, I awake at 5:30 to find Rose climbing into bed with us. She then proceeds to toss and turn and snuggle as closely as she possibly can (which did include actually crawling on top of me), wiggling some more, kicking me, yanking blankets, followed by more tossing and turning. After 20 minutes of this, I growled out, "Lay STILL". She did. And she fell asleep. Good girl.

Just as I'm drifting off to sleep, Hubby's alarm goes off at 6am. He hits it after five blaringly loud beeps and a few kicks from me, then he snuggles back under the covers. I'm wide awake again. [sigh] I try to ignore my mounting anger at his alarm as it goes off again and I kick him. Again. Hard. I would yell but Rose is asleep almost on top of me and Jade is in the playpen in our room, having given up her room to our guests. I decide that my anger level is too high and I'd better tell him to turn it off or I'll never go back to sleep and the girls will wake up.

So I kick him a few more times (that helps with my anger...a little) and he whisper-shouts to me, "Turn it off?" I growl, "YES". He whispers, "Ok". I'm thinking I might be able to drift off again when I hear Jade shift. Oh. No. Please. For the love of all that is good and holy, please do not wake up at 6am. PLEASE. I hold my breath.

I hear the shrrrrrr of the playpen fabric as she stands up. PLEASE. Lay. back. down. "Babababaaabaaaa," I hear. Out of sheer panic that she will wake Rose up at 6am also, I grab her and leave the room. [sigh]

Of course the rest of the house is utterly silent and there are two tweenies on my couches so I'm trying to feed Jade and keep her quiet in her early morning happy squeals and giggles. After an hour, I get to lay Jade back down to sleep. She's out for the count. Can I go back to sleep? No...Hubby and Rose are awake now. And Matthew has woken up too. I take my shower and get ready. There's no salvaging going back to bed now.

At 8am, I decide that there's no possible earthly way to keep Rose quiet for much longer and I suggest she and I run to Target and get some milk for our guests breakfast. She happily agrees. Matthew (the home-body) stays home and agress to be quiet.

Rose and I head out. The very moment we walked out of the house at 8am, our bodies revulsed in heat and started immediately pouring sweat from our very core innards. We're having storms tonight as a "cold front" moves in. A COLD FRONT. Yes, they had the audacity to call it a COLD front. The high tomorrow will be around 90. But I digress...you know how I feel about air conditioning...it should be EVERYWHERE.

Once in Target, I attempt to give our guests a little extra sleeping quiet time by browsing around the store. At some point, we head to the bathroom. It's just shortly after the store-opening hour and very few customers are in the store. We have the bathroom to ourselves. Rose begins to repeatedly vocalize one word in the stall next to me.

"Weeeee. weeeeeeeee. Weeeeeeeee!! WeeeeeeeeeeEEEEEEEE!" This goes on for a bit. I'm not sure what she's really doing but how much trouble can she be in (apparently I still have a lot to learn as a parent...lol)? As her wee's increase and reach the apex, someone comes in the bathroom. Rose is going full-steam ahead.

I decide that maybe Rose is in some kind of trance now and doesn't realize there are other people in there now. So I say in a silly voice, "Roooose, what are you doing, silly girl?" Swift comes the excited reply...
"I'm learning to whistle Mommy!"

What could I say to that? Could I tell her that saying "wee" in a high pitched squealing voice did not constitute a whistle? Nah.

"You go girl!" ;)

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