Confession of a sinner

I am not a morning person. Waking up early every morning is a huge challenge for me, a really gigantic challenge indeed. Even at this age, it’s still a problem to me. Don’t get me wrong, I am not proud to admit this at all. It’s like a confession of a sinner. [For the record, I do not condone the act of waking up late every morning. We must make the effort to start our day in the early hours and breathe the fresh morning air after subuh prayer every day.]

This morning my second son asked me “mama, could you wake up early tomorrow morning and prepare food for my Teacher’s Day celebration at school?” (It’s quite embarrassing to have your kid ask you to wake up early, isn’t it?) He wants to bring spaghetti to school. My mind was going wild trying to figure out the best way to fulfill his request yet at the same time save my lazy butt. Instead of spaghetti, I suggested sandwiches – egg and tuna (both are his favourite). Thank God he agreed to it. I will prepare the filling at night and have my maid assemble them in the morning, smart eh?

My kids are not really breakfast persons. A cup of milo and scrambled egg (sometimes cereal) are on their daily breakfast menu. It’s not that I don’t want to vary their menu but they just don’t wanna eat anything else but egg, egg and egg for breakfast (if given a choice for lunch, dinner and supper too!). My maid is well trained in preparing both and I trust her completely for this task. So, why the need to make the extra effort, right? (I am trying to justify my act here you see)

In my defense, I sleep late every night. On most night, I go to sleep in the dead of night, between 1 to 2am. Sophie wakes up at least twice for her feeding. Each night feeding takes at least 10 minutes and it’ll take me another 15 minutes to get back to sleep. Hence, on average I lost AT LEAST a good 1 hour of sleep every night. Sometime she wakes up more frequent – a change in temperature, mosquitoes, noises, etc. disturbs her sleep easily.

Did you notice that baby girls are more sensitive and alert of their surrounding compared to boys? I have raised 2 boys and 2 girls, that’s the least I could say based on my experience. Even the slightest noise could wake a baby girl. But boys, you could scream at them and they’ll still be sound asleep. You raise your voice to a baby girl (it’s like they have a voice-meter – they can tell between higher and lower tones), they’ll cry, but not to boys. Perhaps my girls are overly sensitive but I believe being sensitive is in our nature.

Every morning I pray that the neighbour’s dog won’t bark, the newspaper delivery man would not speed in front of my house, my other kids would not quarrel so loudly and my husband would not make too much noise getting ready for work – these small little noises would wake Sophie up and hence disturb my sleep.

Oh, you may wonder what about the husband….I once asked my husband of almost 15 years whether he feels alright about the fact that I seldom prepare him breakfast before he leaves for work. His answer was he doesn’t mind at all, although he said it would be nice if I made the effort [for the record, I do prepare him breakfast on weekends. I am not that bad of a wife].

Hmmm…I say one cannot possibly be a perfect mom. In reality, do people like Bree Van de Kamp exist?