Its 4:30am! Up and at 'em!

In the wee hours sometime between Friday night and Saturday morning, I heard a child calling me from the kids' bedroom. As I made my way towards their room in the darkness, I tried to figure out which kid it was -- sounded like Seconda one second and Primo the next. When I opened the door to their room I discovered that it was BOTH Primo and Seconda, BOTH awake, and not just awake but wide awake, bright-eyed and bushy tailed. ALERT, like they’d drank a whole pot of coffee.

“Its time to WAKE UP Primo!” Seconda announced.

“I know, I know,” he grumbled at her, the way he always does like Archie Bunker did to Edith in All in the Family.

And he proceeded to climb down the ladder from the top bunk.

“GUYS!” I exclaimed (just short of yelling, thank you very much),”It is NOT time to wake up. It is the middle of the night,”

Then I looked at the clock to confirm.

4:30.

“It is the middle of the night. See how it is completely dark in here?”

They didn’t look convinced but they did lie back down. I knew as soon as I left the room though, one would try to keep the other awake so I opted to just crawl into the bottom bunk to make sure there was no monkey business. The bottom bunk is always vacant because Seconda sleeps on the floor. Please don’t get me started on how much money we spent on this damn bed which she never uses. The upside is we have an extra bed in the house.

So I crawled in there, and tried to fall back asleep while remaining totally alert so that I could put a lid on the child who piped up.

But for a good half hour, the children were silent. They were flopping and kicking and tossing about like a bunch of rhinos in their sleep spaces but there was no talking.

Then at 5am, Seconda repeated her announcement: “OK Primo, its time to wake up!”

He had been apparently at the ready, waiting for her command, because he was down the ladder in a few seconds.

“GUYS!” I yelled (full on yelling now), “It is NOT time to wake up! It is FIVE O’CLOCK!”

“But its light out Mommy!” Primo pointed out, gesturing to the slim sliver of sunlight which came in from the sides of his room-darkening shades. Damn that shade company for forcing me to leave ¼ of an inch on either side so I could raise and lower the blinds. Damn the sun for stirring shit up. No one in their right minds considers 5 am morning.

But that was it. Kids were up. Good morning.

The funny thing is, that’s not even the annoying part of the story.

Nest night, we put the kids to bed, terrified that this insanely early wake up would repeat. Then, at 1:30am, we heard two sounds you don’t want to hear in the middle of the night. Your child calling and the loud blaring of an alarm clock in their room.

“WHAT THE FUCK?” I whisper-yelled to David and we both jumped up and raced to the bedroom.

Yes, somehow the alarm clock had been turned up to full volume and set for 1:30am.

(This is one of those things that never happened before we had kids and now happens with disquieting frequency because the kids won’t keep their grubby little fingers off the alarm clock. They never accidentally set it for 1:30PM though, I’ll have you note),

David unplugged the infernal machine and I tucked Sec back in, begging the heavens not to wake the other one.

Because once they are both awake, the jig is up.

Heavens smiled upon us, and Sec went back to sleep without waking her brother.

But too close a call for my liking. I mean, come on. Give a girl a chance to get back on her sleep feet, right?