Consideration

Alice, for all her mischievous flaws, is very very considerate about sleep. Helen, not so much.

Helen can’t stand to be alone, so if she wakes up, she thinks she needs to wake someone else up to enjoy the day with her. This is a pain in the butt at 5:45am, her preferred waking time. We’ve snarled at her so many times that she doesn’t come upstairs to annoy us until 7 most mornings, but that doesn’t protect poor Alice, who is not a morning person. Helen wakes her up frequently.

Alice, on the other hand, does not wake Helen up if she gets up first. Nor does she wake us up. And because she likes to wake up slowly, she doesn’t get into stuff, either. Thank goodness.

This morning, I came downstairs to go for my morning run at 6:20, and Alice was already up. Helen obviously wasn’t, since their bedroom door was still shut. Apparently we tired Helen out at the pool yesterday. So Alice was reclined on the floor with a sofa pillow behind her head, watching “Fairly Odd Parents” on Nick. One leg crossed over the other, looking very comfortable. I filled up a juice cup for her and got a Pop Tart (unfrosted brown sugar and cinnamon — the girls can’t stand the frosted ones), and went down to give them to her. She just smiled at me with her sweet little smile, and didn’t say a thing, since she was still waking up. I told her I was going to go for my run and asked her to please stay inside like a good girl, and she nodded happily and went back to the cartoon.

When she wakes up on her own terms, she wakes up happy. And doesn’t bother anyone else. I love that. I wish she could teach her big sister how not to be a prat in the mornings.