Morning routines #boostyourpositivity

First the fog needs to clear

I am a snoozer ...I can't jump out of my bed when my alarm goes off, so I must set it 10 or 20 min earlier to ensure I can it that snooze button once or twice, and turn and slowly semi-awake realise I need to get up.

As a teenager I already developed the strategy to avoid other people the first 5 - 15 minutes when I was up:  if I heard my parents were already down having breakfast, I'd first get dressed before heading down.  If not, I did the reverse.  With Jan more or less the same is happening: I usually head to the bathroom first while he's going downstairs to pick up the newspaper first.

Anyway, waking up is like a fog that needs to rise slowly in my head: it's not because I move already that my brain functions enough to listen to conversations and respond...but little by little messages sent to me arrive more clearly and I become able to answer :).

The arrival our Kabouter 2 years ago of course changed our habits a lot but then again, not that drastically after all. After the first months where Kabouter was breastfeeding around the clock and if I was unlucky he had just been drinking less than an hour before the alarm went off.  Ouch, lack of sleep. Usually he sleeps longer than us though.


Getting ready
So most mornings the alarm clock is set a bit before 7 AM, to allow to snooze and get up a bit after 7 AM. The bit after 7 AM is flexible: the more tired I feel, the more optimistic I feel about being able to rush later on and compensate an extra snooze.   My optimism is unlimited, yet also most of the time an illusion.

I take my shower at ease while I also browse already on my phone to see the FB updates from my friends across the Atlantic, while I have the webcam on where I see the little boy still sound asleep or starting to stir more and more. Efficiency is overruled by fog and optimism once again.
If Jan's home he gets showered & dressed as well and then usually he's the one who goes and fish Kabouter out of his bed (who is usually already semi-awake by our sounds in the morning), while I already headed to the kitchen to start breakfast.  If Jan's travelling and I'm alone at home and very hungry, I might try to go have a slice of bread first undisturbed before I wake up Kabouter. Other times I go and get him ready so we both descend for breakfast together.

So far our toddler isn't too rebellious in order to get dressed, so that doesn't take up too much time yet. We are still in charge for his choice of clothes and the putting of clothes on, while he starts to babble, ask to go and have breakfast or to ride his car or watch the ipad or ..... It takes a bit of twisting and turning sometimes but no major battles. And when he's ready he clings to my neck to go downstairs.

Breakfast



Once downstairs the optimism has been hit drastically already when checking out the time and then the rush kicks in more.

We tend to eat very traditionally slices of bread with a breakfast spread like jam or chocolate spread. I don't have a very sweet tooth, but I like to have a sweet breakfast.  Kabouter joins us in eating a sandwich with chocolate spread but he discovered that we have other options so now he commands what he'd like on his break: brown chocolate with a dip of white chocolate spread on  his plate to dip in or cookies spread or ... He and I always eat some banana slices along (mmmm my most common breakfast is white chocolate spread (since I hate chocolate myself and since there's truly no chocolate in this spread whatsoever...it should be called vanilla sugar spread if they were honest) with banana slices on my bread. My connections with Canada (and work time in the Netherlands) ensures I also always have peanut butter available.




I also love in fall, winter, spring to eat hot oatmeal porridge with banana slices. It's so comforting and filling. Out of ease I tend to take the Quaker bags of one portions that I microwave with milk.  Since a few months I have to share a decent portion with Kabouter so I need to heat up 2 portions to have sufficient for myself.   I'd like to eat more of oatmeal but right now I tend to only pick it when we are running out of bread. When we've just bought bread (and Jan's often travelling) then I really don't consume sufficient bread and I'd be wasted if I'd skip my breakfast on bread as well. So sometimes I eat bread because we bought it and I feel a bit obliged to finish it before it's dry and old and wasted.  (well we do recycle old bread in bread puddings so it's not truly wasted...)


Rushing out
When everyone has finished eating, the table gets cleaned a bit in a rush , everyone gets his shoes and jackets on and we leave ...in a real rush now because we are late again!!

that's of course the moment when Murphy hits if he comes by...eg when Kabouter all of a sudden needs an urgent diaper change. Or yesterday he wanted to experiment and check what happens if he turns his milk cup upside dow.  Fortunately he wasn't impressed himself of being totally soaked, so let's hope he does not repeat that anymore :p



(this post reflects on our morning routines, as part of a blogging/instagram challenge #boostyourpositivity http://boostyourpositivity.be/nl in different themes with breakfast & morning being central theme for the current week).


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