Good Mornings

On most mornings my alarm clock isn’t what you’d call peaceful. Rather it’s loud and it makes me jump and sit straight up in bed. You’d think I’d be used to it by now. One minute the sound of rain comes from a sound machine threw the monitor, the next it’s replaced by a scream at 5:30am in the morning; for no reason. My almost two-year-old daughter has done this almost every morning since she could sleep threw the night. If she doesn’t stop I regretfully give her a pacifier so she doesn’t wake up her twin brother in the crib next to hers or her big sister in the room next door. She’s quiet then and waits for her brother to wake up so they can chat a bit before I come and get them.

Then there are those very rare mornings (maybe once a month) where I wake up a little after 6am and hear nothing, nothing but the rain. I have to admit it worries me every time. Why isn’t she screaming? Is she okay? Do I need to go check? I wait staring at the video monitor. I wait patiently.

Moments later I hear my son calling her name. “Kilee up” he says. I smile. It usually takes him a few minutes of calling her name and throwing stuffed animals at her until she picks her head up. And the chatting begins. I lie back down on my pillow and listen. These are my favorite rare mornings. I’m not woken up by screams. I’m not jumping out of bed to stop it. I can enjoy it. It’s so amazing to hear them interact with each other. Two the same age, talking the same way and understanding each other better than anyone else.

I wish I could lay there forever, just listening to their secret babbles. The parts I understand are simple back and forth conversations about who wants what toy and who can reach the dropped toy between their close together cribs. “I’ll get it,” one of them would say. “Aha” says the other one.

At a reasonable hour (usually close to 7:00am) I get out of bed and get myself ready for the day, still listening to their sweet voices and their big sisters soft breathing. Then I turn on the light in the hallway outside their bedroom, and in that same moment I hear them in sync say “MOMMY!” I open the door and see two very happy kids. My older daughter hears us and comes to join us with morning hugs.

I still haven’t been able to figure out the cause of these good mornings when my youngest daughter decides to sleep in (if you can call 6:30am a sleep in). But when she does everyone gets a better sleep and wake up happier, especially me.