May 2, 2002 - Thursday
This has got to stop. Harry has been coming into our room daily in the early morning hours before we'd intended to get up. Some days if we're lucky he sleeps late himself, but rarely ever as late as we'd like. And, over the last few days he's been coming a lot before we'd have liked. I'm not sure quite what about this circumstance I find so disturbing; after all, we are parents of two small children and getting up in the middle of the night or at odd hours is extremely common. We've regularly awoken to an alarm clock at those times and earlier. But, somehow it is different and very disheartening to be disturbed in those early morning hours when sleep otherwise would seem an entitlement, even if it would be just twenty more minutes. I suppose it's agrivating that there's no hope of winning the fight on a given morning. We could tell Harry to go away, but that would lead to an argument that would not only wake us, but probably Jeremy, too. We've been telling Harry that if he wants to come into our bed he must be quiet, but that's like telling a cat not to be curious. Any positive result is short-lived at best. So, we spend the next several minutes hoping and wishing that this boy would be quiet, go away, stop fidgeting, or anything that would let us rest a little longer. It doesn't happen.

The patter of little feet coming down the hall inevitably breaks the morning slumber and produces in me something of an irrational ire that, for some reason, seems to last well into the morning. I don't know really why, but when our door slowly opens and the smiling face of an otherwise innocent little boy says "hello," it somehow evokes the worst aspects of being a parent, not literally, but emotionally.


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