May All Your Dreams Come True

Just like mine did this morning.

On an average day my children rise after the sun - what would have been around seven o'clock, but since daylight savings time kicked in, is more like six. Usually I dread the transitioning process that must follow, trying to get them to sleep just a little bit later, so I can sleep just a little bit later.

But today one of my oldest and dearest dreams came to pass, right outside my bedroom door, at six fifteen this morning, in the kitchen.

I heard the girls come down, chattering about how today is a school day for Matilda, but not for Freya, and about things that are made of bread (bread, bagels, english muffins), and then the conversation went like this:

Matilda: Do you want cherrios for breakfast?

Freya: Yeah. Do you want me to get the milk?

Matilda: I just have to get the bowls first. You get the spoons.

Chairs scrape across the floor, the refrigerator door opens. Then quiet.

Freya: I got the milk! It's not too heavy!

Matilda: Good job, Freya. But there's not so much in there. I'll get the new milk.

At this point I'm pretty sure I will have to get up to clean milk off the floor. Matilda's good, but opening and then pouring a full half gallon of milk? Questionable.

Freya: I want to pour the milk, Matilda.

Matilda: You have to let me do it.

Freya does not argue with this.

Freya: My friend Maggie goes to my school.

Matilda: You have a friend named Maggie?

Freya: Yeah, she goes to my school.

Matilda: That's nice, Freya

Silence set in as they ate their Cheerios with milk for breakfast. There weren't even any spills. They even ate all of the food that they poured for themselves, in bowls the size of their heads.

And I didn't even have to get up until almost seven o'clock. And then? All I had to do was make coffee and get Matilda's lunch, I didn't even have to make them breakfast, and we all know how taxing it can be to pour Cheerios and milk first thing in the morning.

Here's hoping the rest of the day goes just as smoothly - for all of us.

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If you haven't already, be sure to check out my dad's comment on yesterday's Soap Opera Sunday - he corrects a few mistakes and describes his delightful drive across Ireland while imagining his only daughter's body hacked into pieces and left in a ditch somewhere.