Typical Morning

I started this blog a week ago while we were on vacation. I started writing this in an artificial reality where mornings are relaxed without pressures of being somewhere at a certain time. Now, we're back. The pressure-cooker that his a school-day AM. I awoke today at 6AM and exercised. So far, so good. My 30 Day Shred DVD did its job. At the start of the work-out, I felt relaxed (physically tired, but mentally relaxed). During the first two cycles of the Shred, there was no noise in other house other than my labored breathing and Jillian Michaels' women-aimed motivational talk ("Let's Go Ladies!!!!!"). At the start of the third cycle, my calm was disturbed. The third cycle is super-difficult for starters (thus my calm is always a little disturbed at this point), but the true source of my disquiet came from my boys' room. They were awake, they were playing/wrestling/fighting/jumping (it's difficult to tell exactly what the nature of the din was while engaged in traveling push-ups followed by arm-pulls and leg-raises). I persevered, however. I finished the work-out and went upstairs. For that brief moment, the walk up the stairs from our TV room to the main floor, I was an Adonis rising from the depths. Righteous (filled with the righteousness only achieved by the freshly completed work-out), strong, fatigued (the fatigue of a victorious soldier) and sweaty: in short, Greek-God like. Sadly, my Greek-God like status was fleeting. As I stepped off the stairs into our dining room/living room area, I was greeted by some very mortal concerns. The tumult from my boys' room thundered on. Questions flashed through my mind. What time was it? What was the state of my children's preparation for school? Were they dressed? A crash and a scream echoed through the house. Were they hurt? Laughter from the boys. Had they broken anything? (We have a nice King-sized bed that is held up on various little stilts; it is sort of fragile- my boys love to jump on it). I took a deep breath. Show-time, baby. If I were talking to my boys, I might have said, "LETS DO THIS" to gain the energy to face whatever chaos was awaiting me. But as I mentioned in yesterday's posting, I am not really a LET'S DO THIS guy, so I sighed heavily and went into the battle zone.
Predictably enough the battle zone had morphed from my son's room to my wife and my room. Also predictable, my boys were jumping on my aforementioned fragile bed. "Guys," I exasperatedly questioned, "what do I always tell you about mommy and my bed?!!!?!!?"
"Not to jump on it," my oldest quickly responded, "we're not jumping, we're doing somersaults off the end of your bed not jumping on it!!" He proceeded to show me. It looked an awful lot like jumping to me, but I guess he had a point; it wasn't actual jumping on the bed. "Alright," I said, "that looked really cool. Now let's get ready for school." (I tried to use some of my trademark enthusiasm, here. But, honestly, 'let's get ready for school' is a hard-sell, enthusiasm-wise.
"Hey," my youngest protested, "you didn't watch me." He, then, took his turn assuring the imminent death of our lovely bed. "Great move," I said after he had jumped/somersaulted off my bed, "time to get dressed for school."
"Why," he provocatively asked, a glint in his eye saying "you can't possibly believe I'm going to make this easy on you?"
"Because I said so, you little twerp," I thought in my head. I said, "because it's school. Aren't you excited to see your friends?"
"I hate school," he said, just keeping me on my toes, and traveled toward his room. There, his brother was till in his pajamas and he was ready to rumble. "Daddy," I heard not a nano-second after my youngest had reached his room, "Lion!!!!!!" Lion is my youngest's favorite stuffed animal; he adores it. So, his older brother frequently steals lion, irritating both my youngest son and me in one swift move.
"Guys," I said, "if you are dressed before I'm out of the shower, you both get a G-Buck (we have a currency in our house that awards good behavior). Hopefully, this got their attention, but one can never assume anything in the frenetic battle of stay-at-home fathering.
I took my shower. In the shower, I began to mentally compose this posting. What would the outcome be, I wondered. The door to the bathroom opened, my question was answered. My oldest boy entered the room. He looked pleased, fully dressed and ready for school. "You owe me some G-Bucks, dad," he said. My younger boy entered next. "Don't I look FOXY," he asked with a smile. "ROCKING BABY," I answered.