Every single day, I’m the first person up in my household, because it’s important to me to be ahead of my kids, so that I can get the day started calmly before they wake up, generally prepare breakfast and try to have it ready for them, and so I can ease myself into the general chaos of life and parenting.  Rarely do I ever have a reprieve from this schedule, and it’s kind of hell on earth on days where I either have a slip up and oversleep, or my kids decide to get up earlier than planned, and I’m put into a position of working from behind instead of in front.

Recently, I left the house at 6:40am in order to go pick up a moving van, in order to transport some larger items to my dad’s new joint down here in Georgia; I’m long past the point in my life where making multiple trips is a viable option, and even if there was a higher cost in renting equipment and driving an unfamiliar vehicle, the end result would be accomplished in one-fell swoop.  Also, with Icepocalypse looming, it was imperative that I moved my dad’s things to his home as soon as possible, so that I could get back home in order to bunker down with my house, so this was actually a do or die kind of day, and I’m fucking over how often these types of days have been popping up in my life.

My idea was to pick up van, grab Chick Fil-A on the way home, one, to give myself a reprieve of having to make a breakfast for the kids, and two, to have something ready to eat in the event that the kids were somehow awake and active when I got back home.  I get the Chick Fil-A, and as I’m pulling back to my house, I can see a light on in the upstairs, which means that the kids have definitely woken up and sprung themselves out of their rooms, which wasn’t what I was hoping on, since in good mornings, they sleep closer to 8 am and not 7 am, and it was barely 7:15 at this point.

I walk in through the garage, and there are the girls, sitting at the kitchen table, eating cereal, looking at me.

“Hey girls, where’s mom?”
“She’s sleeping”
“Ohh, is [au pair] with you then?”
“No she’s sleeping too”
“Sooo, you came down and prepared your own breakfast then?”
“Yep”

And there we have it, my kids have demonstrated some self-sufficiency that I didn’t know that they were capable of.  Ages 5 and 4, and they’re already capable of bringing themselves downstairs, using chairs to climb up and grab cereal from the very top shelf of the pantry, and fixing themselves up their own bowls of cereal.

It should worth mentioning that they went straight for my cereal, the Special K with chocolate chunks that I favor above all others that their mother introduced them to, so I can’t even have my own cereal anymore without having to share, but I’m not (that) salty over it, as much as was amused and impressed by my kids’ independence and demonstration of some truly big kid competence.

I did mention that in the future, I’d rather them wake a grown up to help out, because of the risk if they fell out of a chair in the pantry, or if the case where the jug of milk wasn’t only a quarter full, it definitely would have weighed too much for them to pour it, but I told them that I wasn’t mad, and that I was really impressed with their self-sufficiency.

But all in all, I’ve got kids that have given me a glimpse of the ability to fend for themselves, and we’re one small step closer to the point of where they’re not going to need dear ol’ dad and probably be considering putting me into a home one day.