Bumps & Bruises Before Noon!

Well, here I sit at almost 1PM on Thursday, and I've been up for about 8 hours now! Ian, my youngest son, has made the decision that it is his duty to wake up, and then wake mommy or daddy up, before the sun! Isn't that nice of him? What he doesn't realize is that since the sun isn't it up, mommy & daddy aren't very nice people to be with and if he'd just wait a few more hours to begin his day, life would be so much happier for everyone! Too bad you can't explain that to a 9 month old!

Then, there is my daughter, Morgann, that tried to get our day going before her brother did. Only, her attempt failed miserably! Let me start by explaining that her room is upstairs, our room is down. So, because she's only 2 1/2, I feel that allowing her the freedom to roam about in the middle of the night is probably not the most responsible thing I could do for her. That being said, I usually have a door knob cover on the inside of her door - in short, I lock her in - so that she has to stay in her room! However, because she's decided that it is her job to wake up her little brother from his nap, I've had to move the door knob cover from the inside of her door to the outside of his door - in short, locking her out! Up until last night (or this morning) at 3:30AM, the fact that I hadn't thought about moving the door knob cover back to her door hadn't been a problem! For whatever reason, she came downstairs a this particular hour and startled me out of a deep sleep - that I never found again! Since it was daddy's turn to get up with any child that woke up early, I kicked him to wake him up (since he was dead to world) and informed him that he needed to take HIS daughter back to her room. He very slowly sat up, took her in his arms, and started the long journey upstairs - at that hour, it's a long journey - all the while, telling her to 'shhhhh' so that her yelling wouldn't wake up her brothers - or the rest of the block! What he didn't hear, even though she was directly in his face and yelling at the top of her lungs, was 'I need potty!' (translation: I need to go to the potty). He closed her door and came back downstairs, crawled back into bed and pulled the covers over his head. At this point, I got up, went upstairs and took her to the potty, then, at her request, laid (or is it layed?) down with her in her bed for a little while. After what seemed an eternity, I kissed her head, told her to stay in bed, and came back downstairs to MY bed.

At this point, I was awake. I thought about doing something that one of my very dear friends did at almost this same hour a few weeks ago, but I had just mopped my kitchen floors on Tuesday, so I decided to just lay there until I fell back to sleep. An hour & a half later, I finally did. But, at this point it was 5, and that's when Ian decided it was his turn to be awake. Thankfully, it was daddy's morning, so I again kicked Michael and told him to get a bottle for HIS son. I must have fallen right back to sleep because the next thing I knew, Michael was crawling back into bed for the 2nd time - and it wasn't even 6AM yet!!! At this point, I should have just gotten up and done some laundry because I never did go back to sleep! Morgann came back to our room around 6:30 and successfully crawled into our bed for another hour of slumber, snuggled against her oblivious daddy.

Needless to say, everyone in our house - except daddy that is - was up by 8AM. I have to give Michael credit, he did get back up and give all of the kids their breakfast before crawling back into bed for the 3rd time! But, someone had to be up with the kids because they were all yelling, crying, or fighting, not to mention we were expecting the telephone repairman here between 8 & noon, so I figured since I was awake, I might as well get up and get my day started.

This is where the bumps & bruises part of this story comes in...

After Alex & Morgann finished their breakfast, they decided to play (nicely, for a change) with a freshly washed sheet that I had removed from the drier last night, but never folded. They were on the lower portion of the stairs doing I-don't-know-what with it when Ian decided that he too should be up there playing with the big kids. Now, since he's still new at this whole pulling-up thing, he's very wobbly and hasn't yet figured out how to shift his weight around properly, which basically means that when he tried to maneuver up the first step, he immediately fell backward, head first, onto the terrazzo tile floor. I saw this all happening, but couldn't move quite fast enough to save him from himself, so I was only able to console him by kissing and rubbing his head. His cries lasted for only a moment, so I put him down on the carpeted floor next to my desk and went back to reading my email. Before long, he was inch-worming his way back to the stairs to try again. This time, however, I was able to catch him before he fell over! Never-the-less, this did not curb his curiosity or enthusiasm for his new-found ability, which basically means that he's fallen quite a bit over the last few hours, hitting his head every time!

But, if this were the only accident of the morning, this blog would not be worthy of the title it carries. Yes, this means that poor Morgann was the next victim of her own curiosity - or maybe it's defiance. Anyway, while Ian & I were upstairs getting ready for his bath, Morgann, who always visits us during this particular activity, decided that she needed to go potty. Being the conscientious parent that I am, I decided that she did not need to go potty, but only wanted to come into the tub/toilet area of the bathroom with us to disturb Ian. This disturbance always leads to mommy getting as wet as him (see my previous story about bathtime), so this is why I chose to keep Morgann out this time around! Well, since I told her to 'go play' without specifying 'in your bedroom' or 'in the playroom', she decided to climb onto the bathroom counter to play with whatever she could find. See where this is going yet? Since I wasn't actually watching her, I'm not exactly sure what happened, but my best guess is that she lost her balance, fell off of the counter backwards and landed, you guessed it, head-first on the tile floor! The head-first part I'm pretty certain of since I was only on the other side of the door and I not only heard her head hit, but felt it as well, through the floor! Now, what exactly was I supposed to do? I had a 9 month old wet, wriggly child laying the tub, covered in soap, and a 2 year old screaming on the floor. I did the only thing I could do...I yelled at the top of my lungs for daddy! Thankfully, daddy was awake at this point, so he came racing upstairs to hug & kiss my screaming baby girl, while I finished giving Ian his bath! By the time I got him dried off, dressed and back downstairs, Morgann's screaming had calmed to only cries that her 'head huuts'. Since the hugs & kisses that daddy & mommy were bestowing on her were obviously not helping the obligatory headache that follows such an accident, the Motrin I gave her kicked in within about 20-30 minutes and she's been fine ever since :)

Did I mention that this all happened BEFORE 10AM?!?!