In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning

Today's post is rather short today, so I'll offer my apologies now.  You see, I'm running rather short on rest these days ever since Graham decided that he'd like to one-up the current world record for most consecutive days without sleep.

And truth be told, if he found himself awake at 3am, or 5am or even 7am, a wake-up time I'd be beyond thrilled to see again, he could play quietly and not disturb the rest of the house.  But that simply wouldn't do.

His first order of business is assault all of the electronics in their room as well as the mini-blinds.  Once that task is complete, the room blanketed in darkness and the CD player skipping relentlessly on a classical lullaby, he wakes Cael and then all hell breaks loose.  They bound around the house, almost always pausing to take all of the discs out of the DVDs and Wii games because, well, because they can, and then stampeding upstairs to wake me in the most jarring manner possible.

This morning they encountered Joel as he was preparing to leave for work, and he kindly supplied them with a small bowl of chocolate Cheerios as a snack in an effort to buy me an extra few minutes of slumber before they'd down the pot rack or blow up the gas stove.

But this morning I woke up to a feeling.  Nothing tangible, just an overwhelming sense that something was going down.  I immediately noticed that my bedroom door was closed and I slowly tiptoed out into the kitchen to find them, wide eyed, in the center of the kitchen.

If their eyes were wide, mine were like saucers.  They both stood, pantless, with their feet crushing a heap of trampled Chocolate Cheerios.  Nearby, a trail of small foil wrappers led to the open pantry cabinet where the bucket of miscellaneous candy (from Easter and other celebrations) had been pilfered and ransacked along with the other contents of the closet, as though Graham were attempting to slave away in the kitchen assembling a gourmet meal of hollow chocolate bunnies, Mediterranean couscous and canned Vienna sausages.  Only then did my eyes trail to Cael, who revealed a pair of scissors in one of his frozen hands, and a bag of campfire marshmallows in the other.

Oh,and Graham wasn't wearing a diaper, either.

But the clock said 7:18am.  Hooray for small big victories... and big clean-up efforts.