Ishu’s party trick last night was waking his mama up at 2:45am. He snuck out of bed, went into the kitchen, opened up the fridge and grabbed the milk carton. I was woken up by said milk carton being placed on my belly.

“Moam-it dudu, mama,” (Warm it milk, mama) he requested.

He hasn’t done this in a while. He usually does it when he genuinely does feel hungry.

So I took the carton off my belly and we walked to the kitchen to heat up some milk.

He chugged it and then immediately crawled back into bed, wanting to snuggle.

We both fell back asleep and he is still sleeping in the other room.

My first meeting of the day doesn’t start until 9:15am and it’s a phone call. Meaning I don’t have to brush my hair, don’t have to brush my teeth, don’t have to be presentable in any way whatsoever. And that’s probably a good thing as I’m moving s-l-o-w this morning.

I sometimes wonder how I’d be able to do this whole ‘mom’ thing if I had to get up and go into work every day at 7:30am. If I had to get both of us ready and fed and out the door on time.

That feels like it’d be hard.

I am seriously amazed at all the millions of parents that do this – and often times with more than one kid!

But, more than anything, it’s been really nice to get to have the mornings with him. Because this school district I work for is on the west coast, my day generally starts later than most. Which means Ishu and I get to go out for walks, scooter rides, blue cake pops, the works. All before I have to put my school psych hat on.

Yesterday, we walked over to Jane Addams Memorial Park so he could practice more scooter-ing away from the cars. It was so nice, getting to breathe in the morning air and watch this little monkey speed-race down the path.

At one point, he pushed his scooter down and started running around the dried-up fountain.

“Mama, chess Ishu,” (Mama, chase Ishu), he stated, giggling and giggling and giggling as I caught up to him.

He ran over to the grassy area and ran down a short incline. Running back up, running back down, enjoying the way he sped up as his little feet carried him down.

He paused to watch the birds fly from tree to tree. Paused again when a helicopter flew overhead.

It’s such a beautiful way to start my day.

Outdoors with my baby.

Yeah, it feels exhausting at times to squeeze in an outdoor adventure all before work starts for the day. (Especially when he wakes me up at 2:45 some days). But my days used to start with a Venti-sized coffee at 6am, a pick-me-up Venti coffee at 1pm and I didn’t do anything BUT work.

So these mornings with him are a nice little reminder that there’s more to life than throwing ourselves into work. Sometimes it’s nice to run around fountains and stare up at the sky and breathe in the cold, damp air.

Kids make it a little harder to throw yourself into work.

But maybe that’s not such a bad thing.