A Good Morning

Since three mornings a week, the gist is:

*"Collin, if you don't eventually finish your breakfast, I'm going to just have to feed it to the dog" (this, after thirty minutes of him singing to his eggs and breaking his Nutrigrain bar into microscopic pieces to be arranged into neat little rows on his plate)

*"Collin, where are you?" Said, in the sweetest tone possible through gritted teeth because by the ninetieth time, the game is a little old. (in hopes if finding him to dress him/brush his teeth/put his shoes on/smack him around a little (joking of course)/put him in the car/etc/...of course upon his playing "get me" during the morning routine)

*"Collin, open your mouth just a leeeeetle wider please. The toothbrush just does not fit in that way. And wait! WAIT! Don't spit yet! Oh sh-!" (remembering that Mommy is working on not swearing)

*And, "Get IN the car! I don't care that there is a rock over there! IN the car. IN! IN! IN!" Followed closely by my throwing whatever rock/leaf/poisonous berry he found on the thirty minute Odyssey between the front door and the car.

Anyway, I love Friday morning because there is nothing holding us back, baby. As much as I love, love, love having him in preschool and I love his preschool, getting a kid anywhere at a scheduled time on a regular basis can be a challenge (For me too! Have I mentioned how much I abhor packing lunches? Thus, I pack them at the last possible second, like on the way to the car?) and I love the lazy morning on Friday. It makes for some silliness.

Collin caught up on his National Geographic Kids magazine this morning. There is nothing funnier than seeing a kid "read" a magazine, especially when it's his. He calls it his 'pecial magdazine. He makes me read it to him cover to cover the minute it comes. Thanks Granny. Really. He loves it and it's fun to have that time with him, even if it means we don't get dinner that night because EVERYTHING must be dropped to read it, like NOW! He simply does not care if that means we can't prepare a meal. "Order pizza," he says. I'm still trying to figure out where and when that kid got so stinking smart. And, whether or not that is a good thing.

On a lazy morning, I like to make sure I can make the most of things by ensuring I can be appropriately lazy all day: thus slow cooker meal so I don't have to make dinner later. Sure, the four loads of laundry and two doctor appointments don't count as "work," right? Oh, and the vacuuming and dusting, nah. It's still lazy, right? As to not waste the celery about to go bad, I went by the age old rule of slow cooker meals: everything in the fridge will taste good in there so long as it cooks for seven hours. And since my child loves anything with peanut butter on it, I thought I may try to pass another veggie by him and give it a cute name. I called it a crunchy river. He was not fooled.

Vacuuming went something like this:

Me: Collin stay out of the den.

Collin: Why (his new favorite word..anyone else with a preschooler find this annoying?)

Me: Because I said so. I just made the bed, I'm going to vacuum the dog hair off of it and I don't want you in there. (I'm not telling him Granny is coming because I would find him less excitable if I feed him speed.

Collin: Okay.

This is where I found him.

Me: I thought I told you to stay out of here. Are you being a good listener.

Collin: I'm not in here.

Me: Sure looks like you are

Collin: I'm not. You can't see me because I'm hiding.

Me: Says nothing and takes a picture because his logic is too cute not to document.

Once that chore was accomplished, apparently he decided that being in the proximity of a bed gave him bed-head. He wanted to fix his own hair. He got out the squirt bottle and his little brush and went to town. You may ask yourself why his brush is pink. Or, considering it's Collin, you may not. Regardless, it's pink because surprisingly, or perhaps not, the selection of small (read: purse) brushes is fairly limited in color and perhaps most people expect them to be purchased by women and we couldn't find anything but pink in this instance. He was doomed in this case. You may not be shocked to learn that he loves it. He also loved squirting himself in the face.

Me, I love catching him making these goofball grins doing it and noticing that he only squirted one side of his head, over and over and over again.

And, I love walking into a room where he's doing something quiet and discovering that, no the room isn't on fire or destroyed, but that he's doing something totally adorable like this. Nine times out of ten, I luck out this way because I have a pretty good kid but this is pretty funny. My son, the hairdresser.

Oh, and I did eventually dress him, not to fear. I had a doctor appointment to look at my potentially stress fractured ankle at 11, so he was dressed by 10:30. That's not too lazy, right? And true to military doc fashion, he made a snap diagnosis with no testing and barely asking to take my sock off and determined that he thinks I may have arthritis because apparently I'm "old." Yes folks, old. He deciced to qualify the statement with, "but atheletes like you can get arthritic at this age, so it's not uncommon." Grrr. We'll see. X-ray ordered and may push to see a sports guy. Not to worry though, got the Vitamin M. I think we, as military spouses should count how many bottles of that we have stockpiled.