It’s 5:45am and I hear the creak of my daughter’s bedroom door open. Her sound machine is still on. I can hear the fake rain sound emanating from the distance. Then I hear the thumping of her little feet hit the floor. She runs directly into my bedroom and proclaims:

“Good morning mama!” 
I groggily rub my eyes and muster up a semi-comprehensible response:
“Good morning my love.” I muster back. But what I really want to say is “Oh my G-d it’s so fucking early. Couldn’t you have slept one more hour/”

But I don’t. 
I get up and go into the kitchen with her. I microwave some frozen pancakes and she eats them readily. All the while I am praying that my son sleeps a little bit longer. He’s not a morning person, so there is that. 
After I give her the pancakes I put my coffee mug in the microwave for three minutes to get the water hot enough for the French Press. During this time I’m continually anticipating my daughter’s impatience and eventual descent from her chair and down the hall toward the living room. 
I’m thinking in my mind I hope she sits there just two minutes longer so I can have my coffee.

While she’s chowing down on pancakes I’m furiously taking all my vitamins because I’m old. While I’m shoving supplements in my mouth I’m also gathering frozen fruit and vegetables and attempting to make a smoothie in my blender. 
At the sound of the blender doing it’s thing, my son wakes up. 
“I wanna watch something!” He proclaims, meaning he’s trying to get out of sitting at the breakfast table and wants to watch TV. 
“You can’t watch TV until you eat breakfast.”
We argue about this for about five minutes until he sulks and sits at the table and eats Cheerios without milk. The alternate scenario here is that I forget he hates milk in his cereal and I put it in the bowl, he freaks out, and I give the milk version to my non-picky eater sitting across the table.
Once everyone eats they all run away from me towards the living room and turn the TV on. 
“You guys can’t watch TV until you get dressed.” 
There’s a lot of whining and protesting. My son then starts negotiating and telling me that he will actually die if he’s not allowed to watch TV. As if this is actually possible. I explain to him that no one has ever died from lack of television. There are no medical studies documenting this, although it might be a rare condition that we’re not aware of yet. But, nevertheless, he should still put his pants on.
He finally agrees to put clothes on. But that’s when things get intense. 
“I can’t find any pants!”
“Look in your drawer.”
“There are no pants!”
“If I come in there and find pants, I’m going to be really upset.”
“Mommy, help.”
“Okay fine.”
I go into his room, open the drawer and locate a pair of pants within 2.5 seconds. 
“See? Pants.”
“I don’t like those pants. I want my green pants.”
“Those are dirty. I’m doing laundry tonight.”
“I want them.”
“Well you can wear them tomorrow. We’re late now, you need to put these pants on.”
“No.”
“Either you put these pants on, or I put them on you.”
“No.”
“If you don’t listen to me you’re not watching TV tonight.”
*Crickets*
He decides that TV is worth the sacrifice of putting the pants on. Meanwhile, while this argument is going on, my daughter is chasing the cat down the hall and if and when she catches this poor feline she is pulling the creature’s tail. 
“Stop pulling the cat’s tail! That hurts her.”
“Okay.” She says with a sigh.
While I’m discipling my kid for animal cruelty, my son has taken his pants off in protest.
“Remember what I said about TV?”
“Yeah.”
“Put your pants back on.”
*Crickets again.
“Okay, I’m going to get dressed. By the time I have my clothes on, your pants along with the rest of your clothes are going to be on.”
I cannot believe I still have pajamas on. But I do.
I get my clothes on all the while praying that he’ll be ready to go while I’m doing my thing. Meanwhile, my daughter has taken all the Dixie Cups out of the bathroom cabinet and is throwing them one by one into the toilet.
“Stop doing that! Grandpa is going to be mad.” I tell her. “You’re going to time out.”
I put her in time out. 
At this point I’ve managed to put clothes on miraculously. I find my son and thankfully he’s mostly dressed aside from the one snow boot that he cannot manage to find. We search high and low and eventually find it underneath the couch. 
“I’m good at finding things.” He proclaims.
He’s good to go. But my daughter has now run away from me and I can’t find her anywhere. Finally I locate her. She’s underneath my bed. 
“We gotta go! Let’s put your coat on.”
I put her coat on and we are ready to get out the door. But I might need a time out myself.