Livin' Large

On Sunday mornings, A. gets up with the children so I can, uh, not. I rarely actually sleep any later than they do, but the important thing is that I am not downstairs at 5:45 a.m. answering questions and pouring milk.

This particular Sunday morning Charlie very unfortunately woke up at 5:30. Nothing good happens at 5:30 in the morning. The early-rising child is grumpy, the early-rising adult is grumpy, it's still dark outside . . . no fun at all. But A. dutifully got up and got dressed, then pried an unhappy Charlie away from me and took him downstairs, screaming the whole way.

Charlie was screaming, I mean, not A. Though I'm sure A. felt like screaming too.

Although I was awake for the day at that point (Charlie's method of cuddling involves climbing on my head and pinching my cheeks), I was not keen to go downstairs and be desperately clutched at like a mother chimpanzee by my Charlie chimp.

I stayed in bed and read my book. It's warm enough now that I can do that without freezing my exposed hands, so I read for more than an hour. Since I didn't hear any sounds of distress from downstairs, I figured A. had matters well in hand.

When I got downstairs around 7 a.m., I discovered just how A. kept matters in hand.

First, he gave Charlie an enormous spoonful of peanut butter and let him eat it standing on a chair at the counter. There was peanut butter on the coffee maker, peanut butter on the sugar bowl, peanut butter on the chair.

Second, he found an hour-long YouTube video about sheep and cattle ranching in Nevada. Charlie sat in A.'s chair by the woodstove (by himself, thankyouverymuch--he kicked A. out) and watched the whole. damn. thing.  I saw the last two minutes when I came down. That was about a minute and 45 seconds too much for me. But Charlie does love his cows and sheep. A lot, apparently.

And last, A. wasn't foolish enough to try to dress Charlie. This always results in screaming and tears, so to keep a happy Charlie, one must let the pajamas ride.

When I finally got up, Charlie was happy, A. was happy (if extremely sleepy), and I was happy that I hadn't been downstairs for the past hour and a half.

So apparently if I would just let a perpetually pajama-clad Charlie eat peanut butter from a spoon and watch YouTube videos about cows all morning, peace would reign.

Sorry, Charlie. You'll just have to wait until next Sunday for that.