Do not read if you do not like angry

Oh, am I ever angry!!!

SO angry!

Gaaah!

Scream and punch a hole in the wall kind of angry.

Imagine you were just slowly waking up, thinking about getting out of bed, planning your day at work… when all of a sudden your boss showed up and said “Guess what?  You’re starting NOW, an hour early.  Oh, and instead of a PRETTY GOOD day, you’re going to have a REALLY BAD day instead.”

It’s just an hour, but I really don’t have a lot of sleep hours to spare.

And it’s the stupid way that it happened that makes me MAD.  It’s not the kids, it’s Ted.

Gavriel Zev comes in, has nummies, Ted goes to work, Naomi sleeps until she’s done… that’s the plan. 

Except the last few days, Gavriel Zev has been more sensitive than usual, and when Ted comes in to say goodbye (gaah!  why?  because he’s nice, but still…), he sits bolt upright and starts crying, , not wanting him to leave.  And, of course, the twenty minutes of screaming wakes Naomi Rivka.  Meaning everybody is up and out of bed an hour before they should be.

Then, in a fumbly attempt to be helpful, after telling Naomi to go back to bed, which doesn’t work and is quickly forgotten (grr), he takes them out and gives them a lousy breakfast:  cottage cheese. 

They barely eat cottage cheese anymore, and then only when it’s coupled with other really appealing things.  But because he’s in a hurry to get to work, he’ll toss a bowl of cottage cheese in front of them – no drink, no fruit, no starch – and head out the door.  Or cereal.  He really believes cereal is breakfast; I don’t.

And there go all my plans for the day.  Instead, what I’m left with is Nightmare Day.

I know plans should be flexible, but there’s not enough flex to accomodate an extra-tired Naomi; she’s a nightmare of running around pestering and bugging Gavriel Zev, smacking him and picking him up and running around with him and grabbing his toys.

And then she cries that she’s too tired for swimming.  Between the loss of sleep and the poor breakfast, she’ll be dragging within an hour or so.  Gavriel Zev is extra-grumpy too, not to mention stressed from her crazies.

And cries that she’s too tired for the drop-in at Barbara Frum.  By 1:30, she will really need that extra hour of sleep.

I believe her.  The only reason I let little kids go to bed as late as they do (usually around 9, by the time we’re through) is because when the house is quiet after everybody goes out in the mornings, they can doze for a little while extra.  This is the schedule that works for our family… except it isn’t, at least not if this is going to happen.

It took almost two years after we had a baby to train Ted not to shout “I’m home” when  he walked through the door.  I wonder how long it will take for him to remember NOT to set off that bloody chain-reaction of screaming and waking.

I wonder if our mornings can ever go back to the relatively peaceful normal we had going there…