When the Sun Begins to Shine

It's a tradition as old as time.  It is an inherent parental right to raise one's children from the depths of slumber each morning.  I had long anticipated this privilege since my own youth when this torture was repeated on a regular basis by an all-too-gleeful father.  I realize I run the risk of giving my grown siblings nightmares (the scars run deep), but passing this on to the next generation is pure soul therapy...

(Even the all-powerful Google couldn't come up with a recording of this.  Where is this from?)

"Ooooooooooooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh......

It's time to get up in the morning, when the sun begins to shine.

At four or five or six o'clock in the good old summertime!

The dew is out of doin', it's cloudy overhead,

But it's time to get up in the morning my friend, though it's nicer to lie in bed."

My own children just LOOOVE this.  But the problem is that I rarely get the chance to inflict it upon them.  They're always up way before me.  What is truly unfair is that they seem to have turned the tables on me.  Somewhere along the line there was a coup.  They've usurped my power of the morning reveille and found their own weapon: The Banshee. 

For someone like me who has only had 3-4 consecutive hours of sleep for the last 4 months, getting an early morning wake-up call is about as fun as it was when I was 16 and my Dad would come singing the above down the stairs.  The kids must have planned an extra special morning routine during their late-night slumber party last night.  At 5am there were footfalls and flushing toilets to be heard above our heads, and someone kept setting off The Banshee.  After Brett went up a couple of times to quiet the chaos, we gave up and tried tuning it out.  I knew it was only a matter of time before the baby joined in the throng, so I lay in bed silently seething and working myself up to some serious morning grumpy.

I woke up again at about 7:30am.  The sound coming from the baby's room nearby was entirely unexpected and unprecedented.  For about 2 years now, my babies have woken up screaming.  That is how the older baby has developed such skills.  But this morning the little Miss awoke and told me a story, cooing her own sweet little baby song.  She single-handedly saved the entire family from "the attack of the grumpy mommy." 

Remind me to spare her at least once in her teenage years, from "It's time to get up in the morning..."