Mornings can be a bit traumatic around our house.

Due to the long bus-ride to school – it hasn’t dipped below 75 minutes for him in the mornings – we have a tight schedule with getting everyone to where they need to be.  The Monster has to be up and ready for the bus before 7:45, and I have to usually leave shortly thereafter for my own job.

Most mornings, it’s a bit of chaos around here, like in any home with a child that’s going to school.  The rush to get everyone dressed, fed and out the door is complicated by the Monster’s lack of ability to clearly communicate what he wants – does he want cereal or french toast or a muffin for breakfast – coupled with his want for other inputs like Sesame Street.  And this is complicated still further by questions of time, mostly in terms of finding something that’ll get him to sit down and eat/drink, and still end before the bus arrives to avoid a mini-meltdown while trying to get him out the door.

Usually, we tag-team – one of us takes care of getting him ready while the other one does lunch.  (I’m usually the latter.)  And then there’s mornings like today, where I’m up and downstairs already for a software deployment at 6 AM, which just makes a few of those things easier, and some harder.

This morning, I was downstairs and on my computer by about 5:45 to support the push.  His lunch was already packed, done while I was getting myself a cup of coffee so I could be awake enough to do my job.  By about 6:15, I could hear the Monster was awake and moving in his room (right over the media room).  His normal wake-up is around 6:45, so I left him be.  When we did get him, and got him downstairs to get dressed, he was in a mood already, and unwilling to go to the dining room table, so instead, I simply let him come into the media room with me, put on Sesame so he’d be quiet and let the wife bring food in here for him to eat so it’d get done, and went back to work (albeit on mute and communicating via IRC with my coworkers).

I’ll be glad at some point when he’s verbal enough to be negotiated with, rather than us adapting to him…