I remember waking up at five in the morning every weekend. Jon and I would hear the wrestling in the other room and know that our early bird torturer had awaken. We would hold our breath with the hopes that she would fall back to sleep but alas, within seconds, she would start yelling for us. We would each whine to the other about having gotten up with her last until one of us finally gave in and kicked the covers off our bodies heading to get the child. Whichever one of us grabbed her did not matter. We both headed back to the bed with her. She sat up between us like a new, crisp book between two worn book ends. One of us sleepily turned on the tv and there she sat between us for an hour, sometimes two, watching episode after episode of Dora the Explorer. Dora was our volunteer babysitter while we “slept in” until the late hour of 7 AM. I’d begin to feel guilty after the fourth episode so we would slowly ooze out of bed like slime moving from one hand to the other. As we got dressed and Ri jumped on the bed, the same question ran through our heads: “when will we be able to sleep in and not have to spend every waking moment with this child?!”

Flash forward. The kids still aren’t late sleepers but they are able to get up on their own, make breakfast, and chill in the house until Jon and I wake up. It used to be that once we woke up, we were planning out the day together – going to the Conservatory, hitting the indoor pool, going to the park. But now, that is beginning to change, too. Maria wants to go to the mall and be with her friends or head to clay café to make pottery. Mario wants to go to the skate park with his boys or hang out and play video games. It is a much greater effort to find something that we can all do together. When did this happen? How were those days so long in the past and now they run so short?

I want the precious memories of those days from the past back again Without the early wake up time and the constant attention. When I would lift Maria out of her crib and she would wrap her arms around my neck. Or when I would gather Mario and put him in the snugglie for a 2 mile walk around town. He would hold onto my index finger with his little hand and just be as content as can be.

This past weekend, nobody had games or play practice on the schedule for Sunday. More importantly, the kids had been wanting a new couch for the basement. Therefore, they were willing to hang with Jon and me for the afternoon. We all jumped in the truck and headed to IKEA.

Maria and Mario tested every single futon and couch three times over. We battled a bit with Mario who was dead set on getting some furniture for his room as well as the basement even though we had said 20 times before that we were just going to find a sofa for the basement. Maria then got a bit stressed because she wanted all of us to focus on the sofa and the color scheme of the basement. We finally landed on a couch we all liked an hour later. But then we had to go find it in the self service warehouse, put the boxes on a cart, and take it to check out (because there was no way that I was paying $35 for IKEA to do it). Then, after we checked out, we were required to walk it over to delivery and assembly so they could tag it and give us a delivery date. We were all starving by the time we had simply loaded the boxes on the cart. The checkout line was 6 people deep. Ugh. We would have to have that daggone annoying virtue, patience. We all tapped our fingers as we waited in line, and listened to Mario complain about how he was absolutely starving (it doesn’t help that IKEA has a Cinnabon shoppe at the end of the checkout line). We did have some entertainment when a guy who was in front of us moved out of our line to a new line, and then, 5 minutes later, returned to our line butting his cart in front of us without even saying a word. Jon asked what he was doing, and he had the nerve to be a complete ass. The kids enjoyed watching Jon and him have a little chat….Whatever it takes to divert our attention from hunger. We finally made it out of there two hours later. We were supposed to go to the mall to look for a dress for Maria’s dance but even she had no desire to do it once we left IKEA. We are not the shopping family by any means.

Rather, we are the food family. We went straight to Steak & Shake. I had not been to that restaurant in forever – Jon and Mario go fairly often together after basketball. Their shakes were pretty darn good. And, most importantly, they had a super-ball dispensing machine at the front of the store! How exciting! Unfortunately, it wasn’t working so we ended up with a gigantic jaw-breaker to eat on the way home.

As we approached home, Ri saw our beloved bald eagle perched on top of the branch right off the highway. We have two bald eagles that live about a mile away from our house. Jon has been keeping an eye on them for the last few weeks but the rest of us have not gotten to see them. Jon took us to the spot where he watches them. We spent 20 minutes trying to zoom in on it with our binoculars. We got back in the car to find a closer spot.

We were all able to see it!

Was I really that excited?! Yes I was. I was back to the days when the kids would be jumping on a plastic tarp of piano keys and singing a song for us. I was planted back to the times when we would sit around the table and play Yahtzee. I had the best of all worlds – time with my kids with the knowledge that once we got home we could all migrate our separate directions and have some alone time.