Easy-Peasy Mornings

Posted on June 13th, 2008 by SusieJ

My afternoons are mayhem, but I am blessed with peaceful mornings. Amazingly, they are quiet, serene and unhurried. This will be the only quiet time of the day. What does make a house full of boys so quiet in the morning?

There is no TV on during breakfast. There is a spot for a TV built into our kitchen, however, it holds no TV. Instead, we filled it with a cable box and speakers only. We use it to play music choice — all day cable music. It’s been a long time since I watched Good Morning America and the Today Show, and when I saw Dooce on The Today Show a few weeks ago, I was startled by how much jumping around, and yelling goes on during the commercials and segments. Keep that out of my kitchen! I can imagine what it would do to the people in the kitchen who heard all that jarring noise first thing in the morning. Maybe the producers of those morning talk shows suffer from ADHD.
The music. I know… it should be classical. But that doesn’t do it for me. I like, and the kids seems to like, New Age. We leave it on all day. I will add that the music does little to overcome the mayhem in the afternoon.
The boys don’t like to sleep. Really, this is not a virtue, but it does have its benefits in the morning. They are less likely to sleep in — they get up quick, fast and easy. The boys don’t even use alarm clocks, and we never have to yell at them to get up. We don’t listen to those annoying morning talk shows on the radio either.
The boys are quiet… they are a few squabbles over who gets to read the cereal box, but they’re generally quiet. Could it be the lack or media? Who knows.
We don’t lay our clothes out the night before; they boys are so picky about what they wear, they’d spend half the night deciding. (Really.) So, they do it in the morning, in that half-sleepy quiet alert state they’re in. I do laundry once a week, so all the clean clothes are usually in their drawers.
I don’t fuss about setting the table at night for breakfast. I just make sure the kitchen is clean and neat as a pin before I go to sleep the night before. This takes me forever.
I should — but I don’t empty the dishwasher before bed. This would save me lots of time… but I normally don’t do this.
We pack lunches on Saturday for the week. Sandwiches go in the freezer. This is a huge time saver.
We don’t do homework in the morning. We try to make sure that’s done before we go to sleep… you just never know if you’ll have enough time to get it done.
Because this is such a quiet time, we take advantage of it by practicing the piano and the violin. This is probably the only chance they’ll have to get to it all day.

Before you start throwing the book at me for having it so easy; remember, I pay for this in the afternoon when all that testosterone is full awake, and all four of them hit at the same time after school. But mornings are a gift from heaven.