Five minutes of free write on a given one-word prompt with Five Minute Friday. See more linked posts here.

Mornings used to be all silent, sunny and sip-my-coffee bliss. I’m the kind of person who could go several hours without making a vocal-chord utterance and think nothing of it. I like the morning, but only on mute. Maybe the birds can sing. Maybe.

I don’t remember the last time I had this kind of morning, but there’s a strong possibility it was at least 1685 days ago (but who’s counting). There’s even a possibility that these mornings have been quite scarce in the last (nearly) ten years. My husband has a startling amount of energy in the morning, even when we see the world hours before the sun comes up in the winter.

So, I blame him for the current state of things. Morning at our house does not even remotely resemble silent or bliss. My lovely husband gets up and gets our french press coffee going before I roll out of bed. But Oli has already moved in between us and kicked both us more times than we can count. Bronson is hungry and agitated at an insanely early hour. And our morning routine consists of Ryan and I wondering what the news is saying, despite being mere feet from the iPad where it streams live, both us begging our coffee cups to be like widow’s jar of oil- never-ending, and me rubbing my hands over my head constantly. My children spout off everything at hundreds of words-per-second, I swear. And the volume. Gosh. Even my hyper husband finds their morning energy intense! I say a lot of “huh?” and “what?”

I take a really long shower with the fan going and the door shut, and I can still hear the melt downs about the fort not being perfect in the living room. It’s not even 7 a.m. and at our house, Legos are being built, forts constructed. The boys are being lions or otters or bears or firefighters or who knows what.

They’re not being anything quiet, though, that’s for sure.

Please, someone, tell my children what morning is for.