We live with a teenager

So Alli doesn’t technically turn 3 years old until October 27^th, but I feel like I live with a teenager most mornings. She already raids the pantry like she’s going through puberty, which Mommy B has mentioned in This Space on more than one occasion. Well, she pulled another adolescent move this morning that I thought I wouldn’t have to deal with for another, oh, 13-14 years.

I knew something was going to happen last night, but I wasn’t prepared for this. Mommy B and I had a meeting yesterday afternoon that ran a little later than we expected. This caused us to get the kids home late and subsequently pushed back the whole evening routine. We tried to get them down to bed as close to their normal bed time as possible, but we couldn’t help running behind schedule. We thought they were both asleep when around 8:30 or so I hear a voice coming from upstairs. I went to go investigate and it was Alli asking for a drink of water. I complied and she seemed to go right back to sleep. However, about half an hour later Mommy B went up to get their clothes out for today and noticed that Alli was still somewhat awake. She’s usually asleep by 8pm at the latest, and here it was getting past 9 and she still wasn’t all the way out yet. I told Mommy B when we climbed in bed that it was going to be a rough morning for not-so-sleeping beauty – now that school is back in, we have to leave the house earlier to avoid the awful traffic… which means waking them up earlier than they’re used to.

They both slept great the rest of the night (finally!) and Aiden was up first as he normally is around 6am. After I got him out of bed, I opened Alli’s door so that she could come down when she was ready. She typically hears us making noise and comes down on her own, closing her door behind her. At 6:20 or so, I called up to her as a first wake-up call. She didn’t come down right away (which I figured would be the case, given the night before) so at about 6:30 I called up again to make sure she was waking up and getting moving. A couple minutes later, I heard her door close. “All right, we’re in business… she’s on her way down” I thought to myself.

Well, after a couple minutes of her not appearing at the bottom of the stairs I figured she might be waiting for me at the top landing. I went up to make sure she was ok… to find nothing. I checked the other bedrooms and hallway to no avail. I finally opened her bedroom door and turned on the light to find her cuddled up in bed with her blankets pulled up to her chin. She had literally gotten out of bed, shut the door, climbed back into bed and pulled the covers back over herself… just like a teenager!

I couldn’t help but to laugh when I walked into her room to find her back in bed with her eyes closed as if she was trying to go back to sleep. All I could picture was a teenage version of Alli shutting her door, climbing back in bed and pulling the covers over her head while saying “Ugh, just leave me alone Dad! I’m trying to sleep!”

I was eventually able to talk her out of bed and got her downstairs with me, all the while Aiden was waiting oh-so-impatiently at the bottom of the stairs for us. She was fine the rest of the morning, but I have a feeling could be taking a pretty decent nap this afternoon. I guess we’ll see about that one. They sure grow up fast, don’t they?