This morning...ohhhhh this morning. I finally got to bed about 1am, and then Jackson was up from 2 to 3, and again at 4:15 and I've yet to get back to bed. Emily let her alarm go off for 15 minutes without getting out of bed. She piddled and stalled and played until both Mike and I were up, in her room, lecturing, and prompting her every move, and it STILL took her a half an hour to put on the clothes she was supposed to have laid out the night before. The very state of her room is a nauseating war zone of sparkly hot pink crap and horses of varying sizes- many of whom have been lamed from losing legs or ears under our feet. There are pen markings on the walls and I found half of my brand new pack of bobby pins with the tips bitten off in the carpet. Lecturing the child who moves like molasses in the mornings usually sends my blood pressure a-climbin', but today I managed to keep my cool while informing her in no uncertain terms what the consequences of all this are. Now the day ahead consists of a massive confiscation and donation mission because the glittering Hiroshima down the hall is simply too small to contain it's contents any longer. When I was a kid my mom had to do the same thing. My room was so bad at one point I she had to take away everything but the mattress and alarm clock. I'm not sure it taught me anything, but it did make cleaning my room a hell of a lot easier. I digress! It took an hour of lecturing, prompting, threatening, and general growling from both of us to get her butt out the door and off to school today. In my efforts to explain to her why her mess was so disrespectful when we have to work so hard to give her the things she is treating so poorly, I realized I had let too much slide. IN the interest of keeping the peace with my ex husband and his girlfriend, I have become seriously lax on consequences with her. They're convinced with all that's going on she's being emotionally neglected (phooey) and in turn I've ended up coddling her and letting her get by with things I normally never would. Until now!

All of this before 7:30 in the morning!! I had to manage it between poopy diapers, feedings, meds, teaching my husband how to make coffee, finally losing my voice from my allergies and realizing the mascara I was trying to wipe off my face was actually the dark circles under my eyes.

So WHY, oh why am I in such a good mood??? Because this is what families do. Bitty is too loud and flighty and can NEVER be hurried to do anything. Jackson is a seven week old bundle that still wakes up in the night and occasionally is awake more than asleep when I'd like to be resting. Mike is still not a morning person and I'll have to show him how to make coffee at least three more times. I'm the one in the middle of it all, croaking out directives and hoping we all get enough accomplished to consider the day a success. Our already harried lives have a whole lot more going on now; breathing treatments, CPT, enzymes, clinic visits on top of pediatrician visits...and occasionally some counseling...but I'm seeing more and more that we're all still 'us'. We're still a family, and no diagnosis is going to change the fact that NONE of us are morning people and we will always be cranky and fussy and slow off the mark when the alarm goes off. And today, that makes me happy.

(No, I don't always have this good of an attitude about things, but I try. )