My sweet Amy

This morning my sweet girl woke up bright and early at 6 am.

Sigh.

Every night we put her to bed at 8 and she sleeps and sleeps like the perfect little thing she is, but then every morning between 5:30-6 she has the NERVE to wake up again. We keep acting like this is not sleeping through the night...but it totally is. She's sleeping 9 or 10 hours straight; it's our dumb asses that aren't sleeping through. We keep staying up. At 8pm, it seems so relaxing, the baby's in bed, the house is ours, we can eat our dinner or watch a movie or whatever. 10 rolls around and we know we should go to bed, but there's always one more troll through Facebook, one more stitch, one last page. around 11, we slap ourselves in the head and start getting ready for sleep. By midnight, showers are taken, cats are fed, doors are locked: sleepytime. 5 or 6 short hours later, Amy Gail stirs and would really like to be fed and cuddled. Who can resist a baby in jammies? Nobody. That's why Rob and I are bleary eyed and puffy all the time. It's our own fault.

Anyhow, at 6, Amy wanted to PLAY. playplayplay. Mostly with Orbit. Poor Orbit is such a good sport, he lets her pet him over and over again, and really only gets pissy when she gets too involved in his tail. When we reached that stage, I took her outside for some rock time on the

front steps. This kid knows her gravel.

She sat down and immediately started sorting the rocks into categories that are distinct, but known only to her. Some belong on the step, some on mama's knee, some in the flower pot, and some on the stepping stone. A fifth category apparently belongs to her dead homies because she tosses them in the air with a sort of open hand, high school play dramaticism.

She paused during her baby work to bark at a few dogs and their people. Luckily, "wuff" is one of the few bits of language she has chosen to perfect. What do dogs say? "Wuff!" What do giraffes say? "Wuff!" At mass on Sunday she pointed to a statue of Thomas More and said "Wuff?" hmm...

A little after 7, other kids started showing up in the front yard because our house is the elementary school bus stop. Oh boy! They played with Amy and were appropriately impressed with her rock piles "Dat! Da-DAT!", she told them.

The bus came and all the kids got on. My little Amy tottled as fast as she could toward the curb. She freaked out when I wouldn't let her follow the other kids onto the bus.

She cried so hard we had to go inside to shake it off, leaving our gravel outside. Poor thing. I remember desperately wanting to go on the schoolbus before I was in kindergarten, I can't believe Amy is already noticing it. I know she's too small to remember this morning, but it's still weird to see in Amy the thoughts and feelings I can remember having myself. I guess that's a little like immortality.

Not yet, little one. It's not time to ride the cheesewagon. It's not even time to want to be like the big kids. Give mommy a little more time to get used to the idea.