As the cheery morning guy of the house, it is my responsibility to wake the kids\u00a0up on weekdays.<\/p>\n
Most days, I do it with loud and enthusiastic singing. Sometimes, I use a\u00a0variant of Bob Marley’s “Get up, Stand up” anthem (“Get up, wake up! Wake up for your life!”<\/em>), but that’s just one of a dozen or so that I pick from. Usually, the song is song from the doorway. I burst through the doorway and break into song.<\/p>\n It’s\u00a0really the only time in my life that I ever get to burst through a\u00a0doorway, and\u00a0I embrace it.<\/p>\n This morning, however, I had to wake the kids up half an hour earlier than usual. Instead of exploding into their rooms with song, I figured I’d mix it up. For my oldest son, I snuck in quietly, sat down on his\u00a0bed, and then started singing. “Get up! Wake up! Wake up for your life!”<\/em><\/p>\n He looked up at me, bleary-eyed. “Really, Dad?”<\/p>\n “Get up! Wake up! Don’t give up the fight!” I\u00a0sang back.<\/p>\n “I’m up. I’m up. You can stop singing.”<\/p>\n My mission accomplished, I left.<\/p>\n On the way to his little brother’s room,\u00a0I decided to get a little more surreal. I tiptoed\u00a0into his room, sat down on the\u00a0bed next to him.<\/p>\n Somehow, during the night, his pillow had been replaced with one of his weirder stuffed animals –\u00a0a creature\u00a0with a bee’s wings and body, but a teddy bear’s legs and head. His\u00a0face was pushed into its belly, and he was sleeping peacefully.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I\u00a0started singing Castle Walls, very quietly,\u00a0“Once in a dream, far beyond these castle walls, down near the bay, where the moonlit water falls, I stood alone, while the minstrel sang his song…”<\/em><\/p>\n He\u00a0groaned and opened one eye.<\/p>\n I switched songs.<\/p>\n “Welcome to the Grand Illusion. Come on in and see what’s happening. Pay the price, get your tickets for the show!”<\/em><\/p>\n “It’s too early,” he said.<\/p>\n “No, it’s not!” I jumped to my feet. “It’s time for your day. Let’s go!”<\/p>\n He closed his eye and let out a long dramatic groan. I don’t know exactly what the words were, but it sounded like “Ooooaaaaaaarrrrgggghhhh.”<\/p>\n “Come on.” I said. “Time to get up, or are you going to spend the whole day pushing your nose into a bumble bee’s bare belly?”<\/p>\n That opened his eyes. “What?”<\/p>\n “Are you going to spend the whole day pushing your nose into a bumble bee’s bare belly?”<\/p>\n Nothing like some pre-dawn alliteration to get your engines running.<\/p>\n He opened his mouth, then closed it, then realized\u00a0where his face was. The corners of his mouth curved into a smile. “It’s a bumble bear’s bare belly.”<\/p>\n “I stand corrected,” I said, getting up to leave.<\/p>\n If ever someone had earned themselves an extra five minutes of sleep, he had.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In which a small child finds his morning voice… Enjoy! <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[123,122,119],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daddytales-cute","category-daddytales-n","category-daddytales-funny"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6DpYi-ER","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2533"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2533\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}