Tue 23 Oct 2007
nothing like the smell of napalm in the morning
Posted by bon under mama-baby stuff
[33] Comments
looking back, i’m pretty sure Dave started it.
it was a few months back now, when O was really beginning to get his legs under him and not just walk, but climb. or want to, at least. but there aren’t a whole lot of things in this house that someone with very short, very stubby eleven-inch legs – which do not come from my side of the family – can actually make his way up and around in any fashion that holds the interest of a one-year old. the guest futon had grown dull. his own chair? we kept making him sit down in it. so the Boy grew creative. or…got his revenge.
he began climbing us. and sitting on us, when ever we were prone. which given that we have been enthusiastic subscribers to the horizontal parenting program ever since Oh the Joys first began selling it thru Amway promoting it on her blog, is quite frequent. we are not tall folk, nor energetic ones. we like to be near the earth.
our offspring, though? not so much. he wants to scale the fleshy heights.
it began innocently enough, one morning when Oscar was playing the ever-delightful game of climbing Mt. Daddy, who was lumbering in bed, lollygagging. O managed, for the first time, to actually clamber up onto the small of his father’s back, where he seated himself like a seasoned cowboy and raised a small hand in gleeful pride. i cooed. Dave, wakened by the weight on his bladder, bucked like a pony bronco. Oscar squealed with happiness. much bouncing ensued. all normal.
but plain old horsey rides grew dull, unchallenging. Oscar, seeker of xtreme thrills, began searching for new parental mountains to climb. riding our legs was boring. sitting astride our necks held a brief charm for him, if we both found it faintly suffocating…but it was when he discovered that he could sit atop our heads and make us cry like babies that he really began to enjoy himself.
every morning at our house, far too early, a small voice begins to howl. a parent rises, sometimes making the futile attempt to encourage the owner of said small voice to return to slumber – or at least silence – for another brief but blessed period. more usually, the small voice and its owner are brought into the parental bed for a cuddle and some milk.
i say cuddle. by this i mean parents lie back down and pretend to catch five minutes more rest while offspring trods all over them, spilling milk as he goes. it’s very intimate, a bonding time, but with a WWE kind of flair. especially since the head fetish started. having ones hair trod on and pulled wholesale from its roots isn’t pleasant at the very best of times. having one’s hair trod on and pulled wholesale from its roots by a maniacally laughing short-legged demon perched atop one’s face, bouncing and wearing a very very wet and pissy diaper?
apparently, if you’re the fetishist in question, it’s indescribably fun, replete with occasional toddler tossing and muttered curses and cries from the tortured.
as the injured party, whose beseiged hairstyle is quickly returning to that unfortunate asymetrical look that we who lived through 1983 swore we would never speak of again, it is not the alarm clock i would necessarily choose. but dude…it works! piques the senses, gets the flight or fight mechanism going…good times.
did i mention i blame Dave? as penance, he most generously gets up with the wee demon love, whilst i catch another wink or three. bless his heart. i’ve written to the Pope asking for him to be canonized.
toddler available to be at YOUR house for ungodly early wakings – a failsafe alarm clock system, just $29.99 per single use! brimming with urine cuteness! hair alteration included free of charge! call now! (must be fed in order to deactivate stamping and giggling mechanism. father unit not included.)
so…erm…what are mornings like at your house?
33 Responses to “ nothing like the smell of napalm in the morning ”
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November 5th, 2007 at 2:50 am[…] you see, with these posts of vitriol and complaint that leak out of me now and then. oh, my child wakes up too early! oh, my offspring gets sick and spoils all my vacation plans! oh, there might be […]
October 24th, 2007 at 12:53 am
hehehe… too fun (or at least funny to read about!!)
mornings are nothing like that at my place… though i too attempt to quiet my alarm for a few extra winks…
October 24th, 2007 at 2:07 am
You know what? I totally love tussling. We just sort of roll around on the floor and tickle and giggle and tackle and squash and Evan yells “STEAMROLLER!”….
I’ve heard some people say you shouldn’t be this way with boys, that it encourages roughness. But the way we do it, it doesn’t – can’t explain it, but just plain love it.
Even with the pissy diaper that swings between his knees. YUM.
October 24th, 2007 at 2:22 am
Oh I MISS those family mornings… the huz gets up just after 5 and is out the door by 6. Swee’pea doesn’t wake (me) up until 7:30 at the earliest when we leap out of bed and race around to get fed and dressed and out the door. Fingers crossed, we will have Swee’pea’s dad around in the mornings again soon…
October 24th, 2007 at 2:27 am
We wake them up. Unless, of course, it is a weekend, in which case they wake us up, well before the time that WE wake THEM on weekdays. So sensible.
October 24th, 2007 at 3:57 am
Heh. I could have written mayberry’s comment — mornings with elementary schoolkids are just like that.
My kids always used to ask for a ride on their dad’s shoulders and then promptly attempt to use his ears as handlebars. Ouch!
October 24th, 2007 at 6:25 am
This morning (which was 18 hours ago…good grief, I’ve got to go to bed!) My hubby away, I ever so tenderly rubbed the back and shoulders of my darling daughters, came back 5 minutes later and poked and prodded them, and 5 minutes after that, I yelled from my room like a hormonal rhinoceros that they had better be out of bed when I got out of the shower. And that’s about it. Everyday.
I’m off to bed to rise in the morning and do it all over again.
October 24th, 2007 at 10:46 am
Bring him on over – the Baby gets up at FIVE. It’s pretty bad – but we do get to say goodbye to daddy, so it’s sort of sweet, too.
October 24th, 2007 at 11:39 am
Ours wakes up every morning between 530 and 6, crawls into bed with us, and blissfully kicks his daddy in the man-berries every two minutes while pinching my arms. All this while laying down and looking to the untrained eye like he’s sound asleep. Oh, and the pissy diaper of course is de riguer.
Sometimes on weekends we can eventually coax him back to sleep for another hour or two, but we’ve learned that then he doesn’t nap that day. So we’re boned no matter what we do.
October 24th, 2007 at 12:28 pm
What are mornings like at our house? Completely and totally like this. A 5:30am alarm clock, each and every morning, complete with bed bouncing and milk dribbling.
October 24th, 2007 at 2:39 pm
Oh how I miss the pissy diaper…Sad, but true. LOL.
Mornings around here generally include some whining, some arguing, some foot stomping, some dish clanging and some practical joke playing.
Not necessarily in that order.
They also include waking up to a small dog butt in my face which my nose has magically found it self buried in and the giggles of my kids trying to whisper to one another ways to wake me up without getting themselves beat.
Good times all around.
October 24th, 2007 at 4:48 pm
Pumpkin enjoys scaling human mountains as well. She also likes to climb up into the windowsill behind our couch, and then jump down on the innocent victim below her.
Mornings here involve scrambling through whatever homework didn’t get finished the night before, stuffing books and lunches in backpacks, rushing out the door, and Pumpkin standing on the front porch in her pj’s wistfully calling, “Bye boys…see you later… bye boys…”
October 24th, 2007 at 4:54 pm
My sister used to be a champion hairpuller. We kept her anyway.
Mornings at my house are about to change, cause I am about to become the first one out the door. As is, Monkey is way too sleepy and JD way too grumpy as they get ready to rumble. Weekends are much more fun.
When Monkey was little, we’d bring her into our bed and let her watch a bit of Shrek on the bedroom TV. We got a few extra winks in that way, although they were often interrupted with gleeful yells of “Sheiiiiiiiit!”
October 24th, 2007 at 5:50 pm
we had many many mornings like this. now our mornings go more like this… MQ arrives in our bed sometime between 1am and 4am. husband gets tired of being pummeled around 5am and gets up to play computer game. my alarm starts going off aroun 6:15. I drag myself out of bed around 6:40 and take a shower. About 7am I try to raise a groucy and sleepy child from her slumber.
October 24th, 2007 at 6:02 pm
That saturated diaper! How well I know it! Usually, if she’s clamouring for ‘Mik! Mik!’ and I break down and give her a bottle before a change-the-pants, she pees right through the soaked diaper, her sleeper, and my pjs. Now THAT’s a wakeup call.
ps: doing the interview tonight. life has intervened but shall do so no longer!
October 24th, 2007 at 6:13 pm
My mornings aren’t nearly as exciting as yours.
October 24th, 2007 at 6:33 pm
Niobe…you make a good point.
October 24th, 2007 at 6:58 pm
“it’s very intimate, a bonding time, but with a WWE kind of flair.” Hahaha!
Climbing scares me. Fly hasn’t gotten there yet.
October 24th, 2007 at 8:44 pm
I get this every Saturday and Sunday morning (Bear sleeps later than me on weekdays). We go in and get him and bring him back to bed to try and get more sleep but it never works. He is in the hair pulling, nose grabbing, turning sideways and kicking you in the ribs phase complete with soggy diaper. I so look forward to the baby riding me like a pony phase coming up next…
October 25th, 2007 at 2:27 am
Ah, yes. I often FAIL to mention the perils of the horizontal method… which include, but are not limited to… mighty kicks to the balls, diaper leak on facial tissue and head butt to the eye socket.
Mount Daddy is universal. (Watch out for the crotchal regions!!)
October 25th, 2007 at 2:50 am
Yuck. Nothing worse than waking up to a pissy diaper in the face. Well, ok, maybe a pissy/poopy diaper in the face. But still. I am not a morning person, and that is DEFINITELY not how I want to wake up.
October 25th, 2007 at 9:52 am
Hmm. No wrestling for us. Will (who is the wrestle master) is gone before we wake up usually. Aoife, at the moment, is in bed with me anyway from the night feed around 3, 4 or 5am. Euey gets himself up now, pads into our room and attempts the huge climb up to our bed (Dad made it and it’s built for tall people). Then says ‘help Mummy’. If I’m lucky he’ll have 5 minutes cuddle with me and a little cuddle/kill with Aoife before sitting bolt upright and saying ‘Get up Mummy’. After that he is very insistant about getting up, watching cartoons and having weet-bix or toast – all of which require a slave. So I get up.
October 25th, 2007 at 1:15 pm
“having one’s hair trod on and pulled wholesale from its roots by a maniacally laughing short-legged demon”
This is EXACTLY what my mornings are like.
sigh. i feel your pain.
October 25th, 2007 at 3:18 pm
Uh NO THANKS! I have my own TWO who do this to me. That’s over 60 lbs, not to mention the load points.
Also the hubs’s fault.
Yep sounds like our mornings. I got up at 5 today to catch up on blog reading? Guess who joined me in short order.
It’s like freaking radar or something. Gah!
Julie
Using My Words
October 25th, 2007 at 5:12 pm
I hesitate to tell you about our mornings. It’s one of those “if I let it slip” moments “other mother will surely kill me.”
We all wake up in bed together around 9am. We all lie there trying to catch a few more winks before one of us whispers, “let’s get up.” It’s not just civilized, it’s borderline grad student.
October 25th, 2007 at 5:34 pm
One kid in college. One getting up early twice a week to work out with varstiy baseball. The younger one have practice for football…every single morning. They go quietly and quickly here. And no one is wearing a diaper, thank God.
October 25th, 2007 at 6:08 pm
With my son waking up at 6 a.m. every single everlovin’ day, whether he went to bed at 7 or 11. ARGH! And with said son jumping off the bed and running with the energy only a 2-yr-old can possess all over the house, simultaneously asking for a banana, Cherrios and Mowgli.
October 25th, 2007 at 8:06 pm
ha! I’m off the Bub and Pie Benign Neglect School – if they wake too early they get diaper changes and juice in toddler bed/crib…and mommy checks the time and decides whether the time the juice will buy is better spent in shower or in half-sleep. Usually by the time the juice is gone, the one confined to his crib has also discarded all the board books and the one who has the run of his room has built a new train track set-up – and my husband has snuck our oldest out the door onto the bus because if they seem him leave, they will cry and then he will try to comfort them – and miss the bus, so it’s a stealth operation. Then I loose the hounds and make tea for myself, read blogs and prepare to face the day/diapers.
October 25th, 2007 at 9:46 pm
oh how i remember those days … its a very different morning in my house, 13 gets up super early, showers and eats out the fridge, knocks on our door to wake us up and say good-bye, i tell him i love him, we say have a good day and he’s out jogging for the bus to get to school early to hang with his friends while we rub our eyes and snuggle in for five or ten more minutes before we begin our mad rush to get ready for work … weekend are different though, we are up and about for hours before we hear a peep from 13 ;-)
October 26th, 2007 at 1:57 am
Porgie always wakes up around 7:00 am, happy as a clam. We don’t “cuddle” in bed anymore, instead we cuddle on the couch while mommy watches the news.
October 26th, 2007 at 3:01 pm
hee hee hee. I don’t want yours I have one of my own thank you very much. He however will only cuddle for about 5 minutes before he sits up & says I’m awake! :P
October 26th, 2007 at 11:02 pm
My alarm goes off at 4, I usually crawl out of bed sometime between 4:45 and 5, I’m out the door by 5:15 and my boyfriend sleeps through it all–amazing. No kiddos to alarm us… yet.
October 23rd, 2009 at 5:44 pm
That’s funny. My 18 month old boy has been climbing everything possible for the last 6 months. He even woke up in middle of the night and climbed his bigger brothers bunk bed to the top and went back to sleep there.