fuss in the morning

He's on a 'rise with the birds' kick right now, popping awake between 5-6am like a particularly juicy 4th of July firework.

As the morning shift, my only defense is to summon Morpheus as early in the evening as possible. Which, in spite of the nocturnal predilection of my internal clock, works pretty good.

Well, except when you want to do anything, or watch anything, or someone is over for dinner. Then the evening can drift out of bounds, and you might find yourself awake at the scandalous hour of, say, eleven o'clock.

Fuss's current favorite from among his dizzying array of wake-up calls is pulling the pillow off my head, grabbing my nose, working his fingers around until he gets his thumb inside my nostril like a fishook then dragging me to the gravelly, unwelcome shores of wakefulness gasping like a trout.

Immediately after rising he's happy enough to scramble around the living room, rediscovering his toys and the magazines he destroyed last night, but soon enough nothing will suit but carrying him around the kitchen while I tidy up, put the kettle on, grind the coffee and make his breakfast.

I'm becoming the domestic One Armed Swordsman, capable of amazing feats with my one usable limb.

There's a lull after breakfast where he's content to sit babbling in his high chair, smashing Cheerios or gnawing on a hunk of apple- I finish my coffee and browse one of the cookbooks from the shelf by the dining room table.

When that pales, it's time to queue up Alphabet Soup to distract him from fussing until it's time for his morning nap. I can already recite it by heart, like a Wordsworth poem in days of yore- it's a good thing William Wegman has such a pleasant voice.

Finally it's time for his nap, and I hustle off to projects I haven't figured out how to do with one arm. Eventually the wife wakes up and I make breakfast and we sit and talk about how amazing he is.
Then he wakes up again.