Good bye... and good luck.

Truong goes to work at 6:30am every morning. Some mornings he leaves earlier -- around 5:00am -- if he's got meetings out of town and needs to drive there, to catch a plane, etc. One to two nights out of the week he manages to come home by 7:00, 7:30pm but usually it's later. That makes for long days for him.

What do my days look like? In the past, Malia woke up between 6:30am and 7:00am. I have to wake Kael up by 7:00am if we're going to make it to school. With the time change, she's been waking up at 5:30am so mornings can get pretty brutal. Get the kids ready, feed them breakfast, pack a lunch for Kael, drop him off at school, and run errands with Malia until it's time to pick Kael up. We head home to eat lunch then the kids nap. During their nap I make dinner and clean the house. They wake up and usually we head to park. But it's getting dark early so I have to find other things for them to do before dinner (the library is a hit but I'm waiting to get banned as Malia doesn't have the best library etiquette). Then dinner, play some more, bathtime, jammies, books and bed. So my day starts at 5:30am (maybe earlier, maybe later) and run until 8:30pm, when Kael's in bed. Oh wait, then I have to clean the dinner mess. So I have long days too.

This morning Malia woke up at 5:40am. Crying. Pretty unusual as she's generally a happy waker. She's not wailing crying; she's whining crying. When you have kids, you'll get what I mean. So I leave her -- she's just whining, after all. My rule is I don't pick her up until 7:00am, unless she's wailing crying then something is drastically wrong and I'll get her sooner. My (false?) hope is that she'll get bored of waiting for me and fall back asleep, thus creating a new habit of waking up later. Makes sense, right? Unfortunately it hasn't worked in 18 months but a girl can still hope.

So she's whining and whining. I'm trying to burrow under my pillow to muffle the sound and get some more sleep but it's just not working. Truong drags himself out of bed and gets ready for work. Finally at 6:08am I can't stand it anymore and ask him to bring her into bed with me. As he gets her out of her crib, I hear Kael talking in his room on the monitor.

Crikey! What the heck are both my kids doing up before 6:15am?!

Truong brings her into bed, she latches on like a leech and I tell him that his son is awake. So he goes and gets Kael. Kael comes running in and jumps in bed and starts messing with Malia. She is not appreciative of his antics and tries to swat him away. Truong helps me by trying to convince Kael into the shower. Kael's not going for it but Truong's pretty insistent. In the meantime, Malia is just comfort nursing so I pull away. She's not having any of it and starts to poke me in the chest with her sharp little finger, saying "Want this! Want this!" Actually, what she says is: "want dis, want dis!" It's kind of cute. But she's serious and starts to get angry. The shower battle between Truong and Kael starts to heat up, resulting in Kael throwing attitude and lip at us. But it doesn't matter: in the shower he goes. And boy, is he pissed.

I climb out of bed, Malia sees her milk wagon leaving and in turn also pitches a fit. I pick her up to comfort her and she wants nothing to do with me, since I've got the goods covered. Kael gets out of the shower, still nursing a hissy and continues to give Truong lip. Truong doesn't take any of it and some words are exchanged... suffice it to say that Kael ends up in tears. Not tears of remorse, oh no. They were tears of rage and frustration at not being able to mouth off to us because if he did, he'd be in bigger trouble that he already was. Malia is inconsolable so I simply lay her on the ground to finish her tantrum by herself, which makes it worse because I'm taking away her audience.

So picture this: a pissed off, wet and naked Kael in a royal snit, refusing to do anything we ask him; a raging Malia thrashing on the floor refusing to be picked up; Truong in his work clothes trying to help and trying to stay dry; and me in a sleep stupor, in my jammies with Medusa hair because I went to sleep with it wet. And it's only 6:35am. I magnanimously tell Truong to go to work, I've got it under control. What else can I say? I feel guilty because I know he's going to be late and he's got a lot of work to do and I want him home early because his siblings are coming into town. What I really wanted to say was: "Please don't leave me alone with them!!" but I didn't. I do have some pride and an illusion of being a capable mom.

Truong looks at me, looks at the kids -- and sort of smirks. Then he says to me: "OK honey, good bye.... And good luck." And he leaves. He actually LEAVES!!

Coward.