It’s Friday!!! In honor of my upcoming book, ‘So…I’m a Dad!(?)’ here is ANOTHER story for you to enjoy before the release date October 27th!

 

-The Morning-

If anyone truly knows me, they know one thing about me that I often try to lie about. I am NOT a morning person. I want you to understand just how much of a non-morning person I am. I am the person that hits their snooze 7 times only to sleep past it the eighth time. 

I am the one who feels the difference between 6:58AM and 7:00AM.

I moan and groan and have to prepare myself for the day, most of the time with an unintentional exhausted scowl on my face.

I love my sleep.

My body is programmed to be this way. It’s something I can’t help. Ask my wife who is without a doubt a morning person. 

She’s one of those people who shoots up out of bed before her alarm and starts talking. (In my opinion silence is platinum the first 30 minutes of wake up. If any of you reading this agree, we need to fist bump right now). She could run 6 miles the second she wakes up. She’s a different breed.

So when the time came for us to have a child, I remember talking to my wife when she was 6 months pregnant about whose waking habits we thought our baby would have.

The results?

Smiley is a different breed.

The second the sun rises and she’s ready she lets out one of those weird baby stretching noises. She is standing up in her crib, smiling ear to ear and ready to take on the new adventures of the day. Nothing, and I mean nothing, not being horribly sick or getting no sleep or being hungry, is going to stop her from believing that. The morning is here, and she is determined to have a great, brand new day.

Most recently, she adds in other little things as well. One day it might be clapping. The next it might be a big bowl of uncontrollable laughter at Lord knows what. The following it could be babbling to herself happily. But it’s always encompassed by her unearthly joy for the morning.

Now, I could lie there each morning with the same attitude my body and mind have had my whole life and think “What are you doing, kid? You should want to be back asleep right now. Go back to sleep. Go. Back. To. Sleep.”

But I’d be missing something quite extraordinary. I wouldn’t get to witness the love of my child getting to start anew once again.

She doesn’t care if she’s tired. It doesn’t matter if she’s been up all night with a fever. It doesn’t bother her that her mouth has been killing her from teeth coming in. The morning is a new opportunity to be awake and she wants to take hold of it.

For the past few months I have taken note of this intensely. It’s something I’ve become quite jealous of. I have worked to become better at enjoying the morning as we all should. 

Now, I’m not going to lie and say I’m a born-again morning person, and you should be too. Or that I wake up with a smile bigger and creepier than the Joker’s. But I’m trying to be thankful for the new days. I’m trying to be gracious for the sun rising again. I’m doing my best to be joyful that I have another chance to be a husband, a father, and a living person.

It’s normal to wake up.  It’s unique to wake up with a smile.

Thank you, Smiley, for showing me this.