Wanted: Just another few hours...

5:00am is not an acceptable time of day to be getting up at. I got the memo, Dear Partner got the memo. Unfortunately, someone forgot to inform the Snot Queen of this development and the last few mornings, she's taken to making her hay before the sun shines, with one particularly memorable playtime beginning at 3:18am and ending just after 6:00am.

We tried feigning varying stages of sleep and disinterest in the hopes of boring her back to a state of slumber. However, as she is no longer an infant and is well able to fend for herself in the amusement department, this tactic no longer works. Instead, she toddles off in search of ever more imaginative ways to destroy my increasingly vain attempts at housework.

We tried to be "relaxed" about it, making sure that the stairgates were locked and the toilet roll secured (futile pursuit, she has some sort of wierd radar where the white stuff is concerned.) But while daddy was well able to roll over and go back to sleep, I lay there in the early morning light, eyes and ears open knowing that if I dared so much as get a second of blissful shut eye she would find some way to choke herself or self concuss just to spite me, thus incurring years of being reminded by an angry teen how she'd had to give herself the heimlich as a toddler while I negligently slept the morning away.

This morning, I am trying a new tactic. It's called giving in. When the dawn was once again heralded by two little hands "patting" - re:slapping the life out of - my head, I didn't think fool myself into thinking "hmmm... maybe she'll go back to sleep if we (fill in blank with appropriate parenting strategy)" Instead, I pulled on my wooly socks, grabbed the princess and trundled downstairs to let her run it off while I hefted my now 40 week pregnant self into the deepest recesses of the couch to "supervise."

Which is why she is now tearing about the place like a mad woman having discovered the last two squares of "really nice chocolate" left over from last night's grown up time. If I was a good parent, I would stop her. However, my shift doesn't begin for another few hours... for the next little while at least, I'm off the clock.