I Have Found His Wake Up Call

Because Murphy likes to rear his ugly head any time that he can, Micah is now sleeping in past 6:30 in the mornings. This is depsite putting him to bed earlier to compensate for his earlier bus arrival. And by the way, I totally called this.

It's now about 50/50 on whether he's up just minutes before my alarm goes off, or if I have to wake him. And by 'wake him,' I actually mean struggle with an 80 pound lump of boy suffering from I Don't Want To Get Up combined with a severe case of Melt Into A Puddle of Uncooperation And Become Limp So Nobody Can Pick Me Up. It's way more of a struggle than you can comprehend until you've tried it for yourself. For those adventurous types, there'll be a sign-up sheet at the bottom of the blog post.

Micah's behavior on days he wants to sleep in is baffling and new to us. This is the boy who is up at the buttcrack of dawn on a regular basis, thinking it's his personal duty to wake the sun before any random neighborhood roosters might. On the rare occasion that I've had to wake him in the past, once I actually get his eyes to open, the boy is all go, go, go. Truly, this strange new creature is a force to be reckoned with.

However, I have found his wake up call. The boy found a shirt at Old Navy one day, and since it was on clearance, I bought it for him. I knew it was all him from the moment I saw it, so it wouldn't be wasted money. It was a button down, in old-man-dress-shirt light blue, with a motorcycle screen printed on the bottom. And Micah loves it. LOVES it. He loves that shirt like you cannot even imagine a little boy of 8 loving a piece of clothing. I have to hide it when it comes out of the wash, because the moment he sees that shirt, he'll insist you button him into it so he can go jump on the trampoline and play in the dirt.

This shirt is his wake up call. As he was lying in bed, trying to ignore the fact that I was telling him it was a school day, and wishing that I would just vanish into thin air and take the intrusive light with me, I pulled out The Shirt. It was almost funny watching him go from Please Go Away and Never Come Back to Can I Strip Out of my Favorite Woody Pajamas As I'm Standing Up So That I Can Get My Favorite Shirt On Faster mode.

I'll have to be sure that shirt is freshly laundered all the time, and hope he opens his eyes long enough to see it on days that he just won't get up.