Our Morning

It’s 6:00 am. I let Alison sleep and head upstairs with Zoe. Here is our morning.

I set Zoe up on the counter while I heat up milk for her, make a cup of coffee for me, and Zoe helps me feed the cats. She always makes at least one of the cats wait for his food as she decides where she will place the bowl. Before we settle into playtime I check my emails and headlines on the computer while I drink my coffee. Zoe knows this is the routine but will still bug me incessantly. My coffee finished I move over to her blue play area. We start with tea. Minnie (Mouse) does the pouring and we usually do animal tea (toys from the farm and zoo get places in cups; sheep milk, tiger tea, giraffe tea, etc.). Then Minnie poops and we have to change her diaper. We have imaginary wipes and diapers, and we put them in a pail, which we then dump in an imaginary trash truck. Then it’s time to pretend change Zoe’s diapers (like I don’t change enough diapers in a day). Zoe wanders over to her books and pulls out an ABC book. We get halfway through, then some letter reminds her of something and she wanders off to play with the abacus on her activity block for a few minutes. Then she gets distracted and pulls down her two jack-in-the-boxes. We crank them for a while—I try to get her to jump with each pop of the weasel—then we move onto her shape puzzles. We do all ten then she leaves me to clean them up so that she can explore her toy box, where she discovers a book that makes music when you shake it; “Read, daddy.” After the book she opens her box of treasures (random small objects she has collected) and fiddles with her 3-D glasses for a few minutes. Then she wants to play the nighty-night game. This entails each of us taking turns lying on the floor and puling a stuffed animal/pillow out from under the others head, so it (our head) goes clunk on the matt. After she gets tired of that game she decides that she wants to see mommy, but gets distracted by the baby’s car seat on the way to the stairs. For some reason I pick it up and start spinning it with her inside, setting a precedent I would regret for days. After ten minutes or so my spine has popped out of my lower back and I convince her that we need to take a brake. She heads back to her toy box. On this trip she finds the soft caterpillar book. “Read daddy.” After the book, “Tea daddy,” but gets distracted by box of treasures; finds Thomas the Train card, so moves over to the Thomas the Train set and stands in the center of the tracks, accidentally knocking over the trains. “Uh-oh.” Pause; “Play-Doh, daddy.” I start to clear the activity table so we can play with the Play-Doh and find a tea set spoon in the crayon bag. We’re back to the tea set. I sit down in front of tea set but Zoe moves past me to toy box and rediscovers the caterpillar book. I suggest we have breakfast. “Read, daddy.” “Okay, I’ll read it once, then breakfast.” We read it three times. Zoe helps me make her breakfast of 1/3 banana, a one-egg cheese omelet, a slice of cheese and a glass of orange juice. We finish eating as mom comes up at 8:00.

If you think it was tedious reading this, try doing this every day.

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