You Can't Always Get What You Want

I awoke this morning at 4:30 am to George's cries. I went into his room and fed him back to sleep. After I went back to my room and laid awake for a half hour, I thought, This is nuts! I'm wide awake! I could get up and have a great start to my morning alone, or I could toss and turn, and maybe get 45 more minutes of sleep, then wake up really groggy to chaos! Be the lady of the house, Laura, get up! And so I got up.

I had a beautiful morning. I snuggled my dog. I drank coffee. I read my Bible. I sent a few emails. By 6:00, I thought, Hey, I'm going to make my family a special treat for breakfast. I love them so much and they'd really enjoy some warm Chocolate Mud Muffins when they wake up. I should do that. I should make those muffins. They're a healthy treat--high in fiber, low in fat, and not too bad on sugar! Make that precious family some muffins, Laura! And so my happy homemaker self headed to the kitchen and made those muffins and prepared some fruit.

Luke woke up at 6:20, groggy but smiley in his adorable dinosaur jammies. I took him to the bathroom and then told him he had to go back to bed until the sun came up, and when the sun came up, there would be chocolate muffins. He smiled and said slowly, "Chooocolaaate muuuuuffffiiiiiiinss!" with a huge grin on his face. Then he went back to his room where he stood at his window, staring, waiting for that sun to come up. He mumbled excitedly about chocolate muffins the entire time.

I took my shower while the muffins baked, excited that I was really getting a great start to my day and that my family was going to benefit from a calm, collected, happy mother. While I got dressed, I thought to myself about all the things I was going to accomplish before lunch. Wash the windows, scrub the baseboards, clean the top of the refrigerator, change the air filter, organize kids' closets by color and garment type, dust the ceiling fans, polish all the copper plumbing...typical everyday housework. I was, afterall, feeling like I could do anything. I smiled as I thought about what a high calling it is to be a housewife.

I let Luke know it was time for breakfast. He ran to his booster seat and waited eagerly. I put down his warm, gooey, chocolatey muffin, grapefruit, and a glass of ice cold milk and he twisted his face up and said, "Actually, I just want something else..."

"What?" I asked for clarification.

"Could you just make me some chicken nuggets?" he asked. I don't know where he got that idea. We've never had chicken nuggets for breakfast.

"Ahhh, make your own chicken nuggets," I snapped, walking off. Ungrateful child! Then I threw in the towel and spent the rest of the morning just sitting around.