The Promise

It's late and we leave for the U.P. bright and early tomorrow morning, so this will be short. Last night, we had a breakthrough in our relationship. It seems that in Jen's haste to postpone our ante-bedtime discussion, she promised that she would no longer be crabby in the morning. This morning, she was true to her word. This will be a subject of later blogs, I'm sure, and I wouldn't call her a morning person just yet, but she really impressed me this morning.

Nolan, on the other hand, didn't impress me last night. He woke up at 3:00am...and when I say "woke up," I mean he "woke up." He looked like he had just main-vained a mug of espresso (or is it expresso? Sorry, I'm a diet Rockstar fan.). He finally went back to sleep somewhere between 6 and 8am. I don't know when because I think I fell asleep while he was still crying in my arms. In any case, Kyan was up at 8:30am. I thought the day might begin with a game of rock, paper, scissors to decide who would get up with the kids, but, in part because Jen had already demonstrated her lack of crabbiness, I sucked it up and got up. It turned out to be a really fun morning.

I made it a point to play with Nolan while Kyan played by himself in the kitchen. I really feel like Nolan hasn't received his fair share of the attention from Jen and me, and I began today to make a concerted effort to spend more solo time with Nolan, rather than trying to play with both of them all of the time, as Kyan often demands and receives more of the attention when we play with "his" stuff. This sounds harsh, but it actually went over very well with all of us. Jen might argue that I'm jealous because Mr. Pie seems to be sort of a Mama's boy, and she might be right. I think Kyan was born with the "Daddy's boy" gene, but Nolan is going to take some work. I know, I know - we shouldn't be competing for the favor of the kids...but what a sweet competition it is.

P.S.: The boys and I completed Christmas shopping for 7 people tonight in less than 2 hours. To put accomplishment in context - when I grocery shop, I don't use a list; I go up and down every aisle in the store and figure out what I need as I browse.