Alarm!

I woke up the other morning to an alarm… this alone is not all that unusual. But this alarm was WAY too early for my usual routine and was coming from a weird location. It finally dawned on me that it was Hannah’s alarm. It was 5:15 in the morning. I went into her room to turn it off and find my eldest son, Nathanael, with his plastic sword in hand waiting patiently for his big sister to wake up. He had decided that he needed a playmate to cure his boredom. Well, Hannah apparently did not wake from the original position of the alarm so he had conveniently posted the alarm directly next to Hannah’s head and had also turned on her light. So as I am walking into this brightly illuminated and loud room I see Hannah still sleeping and Nathanael waving his sword around fighting off whatever imaginary fiends his four year old mind can conceive. He looks at me with his smile and says “Daddy!”… I respond “BED!... NOW!” his smile fades as he exits the room quickly. As I turn out the light and turn off the alarm Hannah simply rolls over and continues to sleep. Man it was nice to be 6 and sleep until the body said it had had enough.

-Ryan

Thaddeus

Our wonderful son thinks some of the best things in life are ROCKS and "Trash! Trash! Trash!..." which he says in a lisp all the way to the trash with great intent to dump some foreign (or valuable--it doesn't really matter to Thaddeus) object into the receptacle for unwanted, discarded, and wasted products--an absolutely wonderful and glorious container to our son!

He's picked up growling in frustration from the other two siblings and proceeds to do so when Mommy tells him to do something he has a great aversion to at the moment. Or, politely saying "'scuse YOU!" when he burps or creates any other not so nice noise in public. I guess he picked that up from us as we would say "excuse you" to him any time those lovely noises gurgled up in the last several months.

Back to the ROCKS... Thaddeus usually finds one (or several) within the first few moments of stepping outside (we live on an island created by volcanic explosions which resulted lots of ROCKS just for our little boy:). The rocks go everywhere with him, down the slide, into the mouth, on the driveway...not to mention other places like his hair, hat, and the washing machine/dryer. But, honestly, would you want to separate a boy and his ROCKS?

Since we just moved to our beloved Island, an absence of brain cells during the moments of decision-making in moving back in the states caused mom and dad to forgo packing Thaddeus' crib in the shipment of household good that arrives almost simultaneously with you on the Island. So, the youngest up-and-coming Edwards has been subjected to sleeping in his pack 'n play all this time. Up-and-coming is most appropriate, for the young man with his time zones all screwed up did just that--up, over, and out! I don't know how many knocks on the head he has suffered climbing up and launching out of the pack 'n play, but it doesn't seem to faze him in the slightest (darn it! If it did, he might have quit a long time ago and realized, "Hey, it's time to sleep... snore!"). So, mom and dad have the delightful task of following the boy's movements from the time we put him in his crib (upstairs, mind you) until he actually finds the sandman and is out for an undetermined period of time (it would be too easy to leave mom and dad in peace for a known period of time, right?). So, we are constantly on alert.

However, even the most diligent of parents have to sleep sometimes. Yesterday morning was one such a moment... sometime around 5 or 6am--I have a hard time figuring out the hands of the clock in such a sleepy state (Hey! give me a break--I'm still trying to figure out the right time zone!!!:)--I remember as if in a dream, Thaddeus toddling over to my side of the bed, kindly leaving me blessedly alone, simply swiping the flash light I have next to my bed, and leaving. What does any good mom do at this point with a 20 month old awake in the wee hours of the morning upstairs with several other family members sleeping? Go back to sleep, of course!

That is, asleep until I hear the other son wailing in the dark. That woke me from the dream-like trance enough to haul myself into the boys' room where I see Thaddeus perched next to Nathanael on Nathanael's bed (where Nathanael was quietly minding his own dreams, sleeping), shining the bright-as-day flashlight into Nathanael's face. Apparently Thaddeus missed his early morning accomplice that morning and decided to find out where he had gone!

AGHGHGHGHGHGH!

You have to love the cheeky, sweet blonde boy... especially when you 'round the corner into the dining room to find the strawberries you have so lovingly cut up for the boy, and know he'll love, ON his head! What to do?

PRAY LIKE MAD!!!