the night owl and the early bird

A guest blog by Aunt Stacy...

Last weekend S, A, K and I packed up B’s car and hit the road east, for a weekend at the beach.

We drove straight to the beach, arriving a little before 11 am. This was the day when the heat index rose to 121 degrees in downtown DC and while it was cooler at the beach, it did still feel like over 100 degrees so we prepared A for the hot sand as best we could.

Despite being scared of it last year, this summer A was all about the ocean. She liked it much better than the pool and could not get enough of jumping in the waves, even laughing loudly the few times she got a mouthful of water. Every time we’d pack up to leave the beach, she’d ask when we were coming back.

K also seemed to enjoy himself, though really, he is quite the stoic little guy. I wish I could tell what he was thinking because he rarely shows it on his face. We held him in the ocean, dipped his feet and even most of his body in the chilly waves and… nothing. Just part of his cool dude persona I guess

I get to see the kids pretty often, but spending an entire weekend together definitely gives me a lot more insight into them, especially A. For example, I learned:

1.       A wakes up very early.

Saturday morning, at about 6:30 I woke up to the sounds of the door knob to my room turning back and forth. I got out of bed a few minutes later, opened the door and there was A., sitting outside my door waiting for me. It took me a few minutes to realize, but S (whose door was wide open by the way) was still sleeping. I sat A down in the big chair with me to have a conversation about sleep. I explained that she’s an early bird and I’m a night owl. She looked at me like I was nuts and told me she’s not a bird and I’m not an owl, but I am silly. 

2.       She has a great memory.

By Saturday afternoon I still hadn’t quite recovered from my early morning and I told A that the next morning she needed to wake Mommy up first. S then said how nice it was to sleep in and I felt guilty so I amended my comment, telling A it was up to her and she could wake up either of us. Many hours later, just before bedtime, I asked who she was going to wake up first in the morning and she just looked at me and said “It is my choice”

3.       She is sneaky.

Thanks to an ill timed smoke detector battery failure we had the joy of a chirping noise wake up the whole house around midnight. After an hour S finally gave up on getting A back to sleep in her own bed and let her come in and sleep with her. I didn’t know this at the time, but in retrospect you’d think that would have meant I got my wish to sleep in a bit on Sunday morning. Nope, you’d be wrong.

Around 6:30 in the morning A told S she was getting out of bed to go potty and instead came in to wake me up.

A, as she taps me on the arm: “Good morning Aunt Stacy”
Me, looking at the clock: “It is too early. I’m not ready to get up yet.”
A: “Want me to go read two books then come back?”
Me: “Yes”

A very short amount of time later

A: “I’m back. Get up now. We need to play Go Fish”
Me: “You need some longer books”

4.       She has two favorite songs – ABC’s and Five Little Monkeys.

 She’s also a big fan of “Apples and Bananas” which I think is on every single kid’s song video she watched during the car trip. That explains why four days later I was sitting at my desk at work, still humming it in my head.

5.       She is a great big sister.

K did ok in the car, but really wasn’t a fan of the close to 3 hour drive, especially on the ride home. Whenever he started to cry A would sing him his special baptism song. It is absolutely adorable, and often worked in calming him down. This picture is A feeding K his rice cereal for the first time.  Everyone was a mess but they were both happy.

6.       A loves to be included in the conversation. If she doesn’t have something to add she’ll just come up with a very relevant question.

Scene: Driving along on Sunday afternoon, after 3 full days together.

A: “um… what… what… why… why… um, why are you in our car?”

7.       She has to have the last word.

Again, this was during the drive home. I don’t really remember what S and I were talking about, or what lead me to make the following comment, but I won’t forget A’s response.

Aunt Stacy: “you are very argumentative”
A: “And it is absolutely fine”

And it was. More than fine actually. J