morning Archives - Circles in the SandCircles in the Sand

Sometimes, when you’re juggling two kids, half-a-job and one DH – who keeps odd hours (often going to work in the middle of the night) – getting the whole family on the same time zone can be quite a challenge.

Yesterday morning, DH actually left at a normal time, but as he’s gone all weekend (sigh) and I’ve been busy with work all week, I got that ‘ships-passing-in-the-night’ feeling again:

6.50am (alarm goes off): Carry 50 pounds of boy, too sleepy to walk himself, down the cold, marble staircase. Pad… pad… pad. Shiver

7am: Persuade boy to get dressed, amid complaints about the bitter cold (13°C!)

7.05am: DH comes down the stairs, in his uniform, his suitcase trailing behind him. Clop… clop… clop. Thud… Thud. Klunk

7.10am: The Little Boy appears half-way down the stairs, rubbing his eyes and whimpering. “Mummee, carry meee … Itsch cold!”

7.10-7.15am: Interact briefly with DH, while he pulls up the flight plan on the iPad and figures out how to save it

7.15am: Our nanny appears and deposits Boo-boo the bear on the sofa. Fortunately she remembers there’s a teddy bear’s picnic at nursery (thank God for the wife!)

7.20am: School bus pulls up outside and BB darts out the door in a flash. Beep-beep-beep. Ker-thunk, as the doors clap shut

7.20-7.30am: More snatched conversation with DH as he raids our ‘bus bank’, where we keep all our foreign notes

DH's pocket money: He's got most currencies covered! (pretty, don't you think? The red Australian note bang in the middle is my favourite)

7.35am: DH’s ‘work car’ arrives, the engine humming outside – yes, he’s picked up and chauffeured to the airport – jammy, no?

7.45am: LB is peeled off me and handed over to our nanny amid protests (“Mummee, Nooooooo! No go!” so I can get ready

8.30am: I dash out the door into the car (no driver for me) and realise I’ve forgotten my jewellery AND lipstick (Thursday, the last day of the week, always throws me as it’s mufti day and finding something trendy takes at least 20 minutes)

8.32am: Feel naked, not trendy, but too late to fix this so I reverse out the garage and set off on the rat-race to Media City

And so, that was it, we all went our separate ways – to nursery, school, work and Hong Kong. [Confesses:] In fact, that was a lengthy conversation compared to when DH leaves at 2 in the morning and all I can muster is a half-formed, muffled good-bye from under the duvet.

At stupid o’ clock this morning, the grey light of dawn only just creeping round the curtains, my human alarm clocks dragged me from some rather enjoyable early-morning dreams.

If just one boy appears, there’s a chance he’ll go back to sleep. But when you hear the pitter patter of two sets of feet running across the marble floor, it’s usually game over and a full 17 hours before you get another go at the whole getting a good night’s sleep thing.

So, at 5.40am – a weekend, of course – I was resigned to a day of muddling along in a tired, fuzzy-brained state, nothing unusual in that. Then something really astonishing happened.

Suddenly, it was 8.45am. The house was quiet. The boys not in bed, but not making a peep. They’d vanished – and I’d slept through the whole thing!

I found them downstairs, glued to the TV watching cartoons in Arabic (learning something, perhaps?)

They’d let me go back to sleep – a first! And there were clues everywhere that they’d looked after themselves.

The puddle of milk. Chairs dragged across the room so they could climb up to get snacks from out-of-reach cupboards. The kitchen scissors on the floor, used to open packets of M&Ms. Biscuit crumbs everywhere.

Why, next weekend they might even pack their own lunch boxes and head off to joy ride the Metro all day.

It’s another definite sign – along with ditching the toddler car seat, breezing out the house without the stroller and our semi-successful interventions to cut down on whining – that they’re growing up and life’s getting a bit easier.

Bitter-sweet? Maybe. But, mostly, utterly wonderful (I do love my sleep), even if I pay for it this afternoon when their early start leads to crabbiness in spades.