The early bird... is generally tired and ruffled
I’m not really sure where I lost control; it may have never had it to begin with which is certainly the most likely explanation. At some point, even if I did have any control – it’s long been lost to a mini-me like clone who’s only real means of communication is laughing, crying, or trying to rip my nose off of my face. Heck, the kid can’t even walk yet (although, to be fair, he’s working on it, taking a few steps here and there before crumbling to the ground like a member of the 2004 Washington Husky football team).

I used to be able to sleep through the night – now, my mini-me alarm clock cranks up the vocal chords at the not so reasonable hour of 5am. The problem with this is that the Aidan alarm is early enough to be really annoying and provides a rude awaking from a semi restful slumber, but late enough that there really isn’t any point in going back to sleep before having to get up for work anyway.

So, at my bride’s subtle, pillow muffled, “Will you go get him.” suggestion; I drag my half aware, semi conscious carcass out of bed and over to Lord of the Manor Aidan’s room to find him, yet again, standing up in his crib, hands against the railing as if waiting for the newly established airport security TSA pat-down slash breast fondling examination.

He is pretty cute in his fuzzy little full body suit fleece pajamas though.

Depending on the hour, either the aforementioned 5am hour or the earlier, seemingly ever-popular 1-3am stretch, Aidan is either appeased by stuffing any one of his hundreds of pacifiers into his constantly open, semi-toothed oral cavity which seems to be enough to get him back to sleep at the earlier hours – or he gets brought to the big bed for a early morning snack to put him back to sleep. The pacifier solution is great. Stuff the thing in and stumble back to bed before ever really waking up.

The snack solution pretty much bites.

Not only does the snack solution generally result in it not being worth going back to sleep, but Aidan is brought to our bed for his snack. Why is this so bad? Well, first there is the period of time where Aidan seems to have a need to roll and squirm all over the bed, so there’s no rest to be had during that time. Plus, of the 25% of the bed that I’m normally allotted, having to cling to the headboard with every fingernail entrenched into the wood so as to keep myself from falling off the edge of the mattress and on to the unforgiving floor, I find that Aidan now takes half of my already meager 25%.

Given my now 12.5% mattress allowance and really annoying, control losing 5am hour, I give up on any allusion that I might get a few more winks closer to 40 and resign myself to the fact that the day should be considered started and I should just get up and head to work. While I may not have any control at work either, at least I command 100% of my chair real-estate and requests for anything from me come via email, not a wailing set of 10 month old lungs.