Morning Rush

These are the years of the morning rush. It's sometimes snappish, but Anna usually keeps things running smoothly.

It begins when Anna gets up and opens the steel shutters in each of the boys' rooms, which I listen to sleepily from bed. Then she gets breakfast on the table. Today, somewhat ironically, it was French toast. The French call it 'pain perdu,' or lost bread. I've never figured out whether that's because it was a way to use stale bread or whether the bread disappears into the batter.

If I've been up very late, Anna lets me sleep. Otherwise, she'll call out, "Craig?" and then "Craig! Can you get True up!?"

True can be very difficult to rouse.

I usually find him buried beneath his increasingly threadbare red blanket, still as a stone. It takes some coaxing to get him down from his bunk, to the bathroom and back to get into his clothes. By the time True and I reach the kitchen, Sky is well into his breakfast and Anna is well into making the boys lunches.

Then it's time to brush.

When one or the other of us is particularly tired, we'll hang back waiting for the other to say, "I'll take them down." So sometimes Anna takes the boys to the bus stop, sometimes I do, sometimes we do together.

And then, they're off...

(this picture was taken a day earlier)