Thursday, January 19, 2006

One of my daily parenting tasks is to help my daughter get ready in the morning. The first part of this is getting her awake enough to get dressed. Sometimes she pops awake right away, and other days it's quite a chore. On the "chore" days, I've been delighted recently to find a secret weapon in the wake-up battle.

For the last few months, wake-up time has loosely coincided with sunrise. When I pull open the curtains in her room, I can see the morning sky beginning to lighten and turn pink. This is useful because my daughter is simply smitten with a colorful sky.

She can be lying in bed, motionless and completely resistent to morning cajoling, but if I see that pink glow in the sky, all I have to do is say, "Daisy! You've GOT to see the colors in the sky NOW!"

She'll summon the strength to drag herself to her feet, shield her blinking eyes from the light with her hands, stagger over to the window, and delicately peek out at the morning sky, peering between a couple of her fingers. "Ooooh!" she'll exclaim, "That's beautiful."

Then, she'll plop back into bed, dive under the covers, and pretend to be asleep again. I'm not so easily fooled though.

6 comments:

zelda1 said...

When my children were preschool age, one was easy to get up, the other, well she was a heavy sleeper. One morning, I was running late and trying to get two children up, motivated, dressed, fed, all of that, and I just went to her bedroom window and said, "Look at the beautiful snow." She jumped up and ran to the window and said, "Snow?" I said, "Yes, in your book." Lying on her desk was a book about Alaska. Ha! What a mean trick, but how easy she just jumped out of that bed.

Mike said...

So far I've only used the beautiful sky technique when there is actually color in the sky, but I am prepared to resort to trickery.

Leesa said...

Trickery with a child? You're up against some stiff competition ya know :)

Mike said...

I have about 30 years of practice up on her. I think I'm good so far.

zelda1 said...

Just for old time's sake, I still trick my son. He, after all these years, still falls for it. My latest, was oh my god, you have to see that naked girl walking down the street. I have never seen him move so quickly to get to the window. 28 year old man with many still raging hormones, looks and says, where and I say gotcha and he says, oh mom. Yeah! still got it.

Mike said...

Hey, no fair joking about naked women!