That Kind of Morning

Alex woke up at 4:45 and wandered into Penny's room. Matt heard him before I did, this time, so he was the one who got up and put Alex back to bed.

Which did not prevent Alex from trying to sneak out of his room at 6:05 -- I was just sitting up and caught him at it. "Hey, Alex. Whatcha doin'?"

Pause... "I was just sitting on my stool." Kid's trying to learn how to lie. Isn't that adorable?

While I was doing my exercises, Penny came down dressed in her beautiful Easter dress and carrying her little patent leather purse. I should explain: there's a girl her age at the daycare who apparently told Penny that she had nicer clothes than Penny did. This upset Penny, and now Penny wants to prove to this girl that she has nice clothes, too.

Now, Penny's had this particular dress for two years, and I actually am okay with her wearing it to daycare... but they're going on a field trip to a park today. So I told her she could wear her fancy dress on Monday, but today, she needed to wear run-and-play clothes. She asked if she could just wear her t-shirt and shorts under her fancy dress and change for the park. No, I said, go change.

There was some back and forth. I'm sure you can fill it in. I ended up yelling at her to go upstairs and change, already, and quit arguing with me about it.

Then as we were getting ready to leave, Alex handed me an attitude about not wanting to put his cup of milk away, and I had to whip out the numbers. (Nothing is more terrifying to a three-year-old than a parent slowly and sternly counting to three. I have no idea why, but it works about 90% of the time. It's important to have follow-through if you do actually get to three, though.)

And in the home stretch approaching daycare, Penny and Alex got into a fight over a toy. I ended up taking it away from both of them.

So it was that kind of morning, and I'm really, really hoping it doesn't turn into that kind of day. Or that kind of weekend. We've got fun things planned for this weekend... if I can get the kids to act like people instead of sleep-deprived monsters.