My Current Favorite Mom Trick

I am not a morning person, and neither are my kids. You may think that this means that things work out fine and dandy, and we all sleep in, but it doesn't exactly work that way. My kids do sleep later than most, but E wakes up hangry nearly every morning. I might wake later, but I am awakened abpruptly. E stumbles into my room, and before my eyes are even open, she barks, "I'm HUNGRY." Sometimes I can get to her to come and snuggle with me for a few minutes before we go downstairs together, but mostly she wants food, and she wants it ten minutes ago. You know, so she wouldn't wake up hangry in the first place. What is my problem, anyway, not being considerate enough to feed her while she was sleeping?

I could just be a sacrificing mother and roll out of bed without my eyes fully open, but I'm just not that unselfish in the morning. I don't want E to have to wait to eat when she is truly hungry, but I also don't want to have to figure out how to use the toaster before I have the presence of mind to form a full sentence. For awhile, it worked fine to tell her to eat a banana and come back to bed, but there's a growth spurt on the horizon, and that is not going to cut it.

So I had to come up with a mom trick, and frankly, I'm a little embarrassed it took me this long to figure this one out. I could have been doing this for months instead of arguing with my three-year-old about whether it was time to get up yet or not. But I just figured it out last week. (Sad.) Still! It's easy and effective, and it gives me a few minutes to pry my eyes open before I have to be mentally present as a mother.

Here it is: I make her a sandwich before I go to bed at night. I put it in a container that is easy enough for her to open on her own, and I put out a fresh sippy cup of water and a napkin (she insists on having a napkin) with it. If I'm really on top of things, I scoot the fruit basket right next to her other stuff so she can grab fruit without flinging herself halfway across the table while I'm still upstairs and thus cannot prevent her from getting a concussion due to fruit-related exuberance.

She eats some, she drinks some, she comes back upstairs, and then we snuggle.

The end.

Well, unless she needs to use the toilet. I haven't figured out a trick for that one yet. If I do, I'll let you know.