Are you a morning person or a night person?
I used to think I was a night person, but it’s become apparent to me since adding my third child to the mix that I am most definitely a morning person.
In the mornings I’m refreshed, even if I haven’t had any sleep. I haven’t had to listen to anyone (except maybe a baby) crying. I haven’t had to refill a sippy cup three times within one hour. I haven’t had to mediate arguments over who’s the rightful owner of that headband or those crayons.
That stretch of darkness, even if it’s only a few hours long, is enough to revive my sanity. I awaken (or not) with sufficient patience to chase children in and out of the shower, brush tangled hair carefully, and start refilling sippy cups once more. And I can do it all with a sense of humor.
The witching hour still exists even when kids aren’t babies anymore. By late afternoon, everyone’s hungry and tired, and at least one of us wants a glass of wine. It’s even worse when I have to cart them all to activities like swimming lessons and soccer practice. By the time we get home, my patience is long gone, along with my sense of humor.
I try so hard to maintain a calm, carefree exterior, especially when we’re out in public. No need to make a spectacle of ourselves, right? But when it’s been a long day already, and I’ve forgotten a key dinner ingredient, so I have to hit the grocery at the same time that half the town is there too, and the stupid self-checkout machine keeps giving me lip (“Please put the item in the bag…Please put the item in the bag…Please put the-” that automated voice repeats calmly while I curse under my breath: “I put the [bleep]ing item in the [bleep]ing bag! SHUT UP!”), I start to lose it.
And while a shrieking three-year-old draws enough stares from strangers as it is, a shrieking thirty-six year-old would prompt people to dial 911. So I bite my tongue, and then I go home and put on Dora and pour myself a glass of wine.
Meanwhile, in the mornings, unless I’m running really late – and I’m talking “we’ve got to leave in five minutes and I haven’t even gone pee yet” kind of late – I’m calm, cool and collected. I don’t even need a cup of coffee to start my engines. Just the refreshment of having been “off duty” for the last few hours is enough for me.
Yep, definitely a morning person.
It’s that glass of wine at the end of the day after babies are tucked in bed that makes me a night person. I can check my mail, read my blogs and trim my toenails in relative peace if I want to.
I never seem to give myself enough time to rouse and enjoy my coffee and the solitude sufficiently before children are yelling my name in the mornings.
I have always been a morning person. In college, I’d stay up late with my friends but it was never a natural thing for me and I was always wiped out in the morning. Early to bed, early to rise is much more my adage in life.
Unless I’m up with children all night. Then I am neither a night or morning person!
Morning. Definitely morning. Each day I wake up, forgetting the witching hour of the previous day, hoping this will be the day when all goes well. Obviously my bubble is burst by the afternoon. But for those few hours every morning all is good. Isn’t there something about ignorance being bliss?
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I get so cranky during the witching hour, when everyone needs something (homework, dinner, referee). And I feel deeply tired.
But once the kids are in bed, that two hours is MINE and I am miraculously resurrected.
I’m pretty cranky in the mornings. I’ve been working the 6:30-5:30 for six months now, and I still want to cry every time I drag my butt out of bed. Until my third trimester, I was much happier staying up late. Now that I’m 35 weeks in, I’m in bed by 9.
I’m so glad I’m not the only one! I have a limited supply of patience, and by 5:00 every day, it is gone.