Just the Four of Us (the sequel)

This morning Lena had to leave the house at 6:30 a.m. to take a friend to the airport. This meant that she would not be there for the wake-up call ("Mama, it's 7:00! Get up!"), and that I would be flying solo through breakfast and getting dressed and making lunches. Not a huge deal, really, but it had been a while since it had been just the four of us. Lena was more nervous about it than I was. She tried to solicit my mom to sleep over so that she'd be here to help me out in the morning, but my mom also had to be somewhere pretty early. So it was just the boys and me.

They let me sleep until 7:10. A small miracle. They woke me up happily, and Jasper was already dressed. We went downstairs for breakfast, and then after the kids had eaten (granola with milk for Jaz, rice cakes with jam for Luke, a pile of O cereal for Zeb), I started making the lunches for school. I was listening in on them in the other room while I cut up the peppers and melon, and they were singing some sort of a made-up song about dancing on the table. I hummed along for a bit and then thought, "huh, maybe I should check that out." Sure enough, this is what I saw:

Three boys, dancing on the table. Actually, three boys trying to swing from the chandelier!

What does this say about my disciplinarian skills that I grabbed the camera and snapped a few pictures before asking them to get off? Oh well. I wondered if this was the kind of chaos Lena was imagining when she worried about how the morning would go without her.

After that, everything really was smooth sailing. Everyone was friendly and helpful, and we got out the door (with raincoats and boots) in record time.

I walked the boys to school in the covered wagon (it was raining pretty hard), and then Zeben and I walked around town for a bit and I got totally soaked. The rain felt really good.

Luckily for all of us, Lena rarely has to leave the house so early (generally in the summer, she doesn't have to be at work until about 10:00). But it was nice to remember that I can do the morning routine by myself if need be. And I can even have fun doing it.