SMILF: Snot Rockets and Knock-Knock Jokes

Saying that I am not a morning person is the understatement of the century. Last week we were in the car early in the morning and Tyler was still asleep. He woke up when the sun started beating in the windows – he promptly gave the sun a look that could kill and pulled a big blanket over his head. That is how I feel every morning. I want to pull a big blanket over my head and hide.

My normal weekday morning routine consists of me going to pee when Robert gets up for work at 6:30 and then I go back to sleep until 7:27. 3 snoozes for those who are counting. I get up, brush my teeth, wash my face, throw on some clothes, brush my hair, grab my breakfast to eat at work and I am out the door by 7:50.

This week as I mentioned we have the little people so my routine is all out of whack. Since Robert has to be at work way earlier than me, my job is to take the kids to the babysitter before work. The normal 6:30am pee break this week is the time I have to roll out of bed and be ready to be super SMILF. No time to lie in bed and listen to my body saying, “Wait, I just peed, why are we getting up?!” The kids are up, ready for breakfast ,and ready to talk. Let’s recall…normally I’m not even up until an hour after this.

I stumble in and the kids are sitting on the couch already watching Spiderman or whatever happens to be on. I make my way into the kitchen and pull out of the cabinets my favorite invention of the week…ready? Pop-Tarts with knock-knock jokes on them. GENIUS! Some of you probably know that little kids LOVE knock-knock jokes. The more ridiculous the better. These are pretty ridiculous. (knock knock….who’s there?....Hawaii….Hawaii who?...I’m fine, Hawaii you?....Cue the giggles). BUT. Two kids, two pop-tarts, and they are entertained for at least 15 minutes telling each other the same jokes over and over. Thank you Mr. Pop-Tart man. During those 15 minutes I can have the discussion with my body that we are going to be adult today and we will NOT crawl back under the covers like we want to.

Our kids are sneezers in the mornings. I am fairly positive that they have seasonal allergies, but their mother says they do not, so that is what goes. Because after all, she is an MD. (Oh wait, no she isn’t, she just claims to know everything without gathering real information. That’s right. I forgot for a minute.) Anyway, these aren’t little dainty sneezes. When these kids sneeze, I am talking full on messy, gooey sneezes that if you told me 5 years ago I would be wiping up I would have thrown up on your shoes. I am used to this now. This morning though, I was getting Tyler’s shoes on him and I hear Sydney walk into their bathroom and sneeze really loud. I figured she was okay since she was by a box of Kleenex so I thought nothing of it. This is the
conversation that follows:

Sydney: ::giggling:: Wow, that was a really big snot rocket!
SMILF: ::gagging:: (okay, I didn’t really gag, but I considered it. Snot rocket? Before 7:30am?) Wow, great, did you get to a Kleenex?
Sydney: ::giggling:: Nope! I didn’t need to! I sneezed right over the trash can and since the trash bag has nothing in it, when the snot rocket fell into it, it made this really cool noise. I heard it go into the trash can!
SMILF: ::laughing now:: Okay, please wash your hands and go get dressed now.

The rest of the morning consisted of getting kids dressed, brushing tangles the size of small animals out of Sydney’s hair, cleaning up Cranberry juice that Tyler spilled on the couch, blanket, and floor, getting Sydney’s softball items ready, and managing to remember to grab my breakfast. We left our house around 7:12am to head to the babysitter. Target time was 7:10 so not bad.

Both kids were in a good mood this morning thank goodness so that means Sydney was extra talkative the whole 30 minute car ride. Have you ever seen that Volvo commercial? The one where the dad is putting the little girl in the car after school and she keep talking the entire time even when he shuts the door and walks around to get in the car and he can’t hear her…she is still talking. I think that commercial is adorable. That is how it was this morning for us. I learned during that drive (among other things) about how the kids at the U-shaped table never really learned how to work together as a team, how “Johnny” was the only kid who always had to go to principal’s office and he even had to go visit the 3rd grade teacher so she could tell him, “Johnny, next year, I will not put up with this kind of behavior”, and how the boy we are currently crushing on “T” pulled someone’s chair out from under them (this was followed by a fit of giggles and repeatedly telling me how funny he is).

I pulled into the baby-sitters around 7:40. I thought to myself, wow. I am normally at this point just rubbing crusty unknown crap out of my eyes and trying to figure out what excuse I can use to NOT have to go to work. I’ve already had a full morning!

Some of you full time mom’s are probably thinking, “That morning sounds like a cake walk”, but to me, it is very out of my routine and so surviving it is a small victory for me. I thank God for having good stepkids. And for knock-knock joke Pop-Tarts.