I awoke this morning to the sound of the doorbell. My basement contractor was on time, as is his custom. For some reason, I was sleeping the sleep of the righteous, aka the sleep of the dead. After looking around my bedroom with lost eyes, reminiscent of a college student trying to find English Comp. on their first day, I threw on a t-shirt and pair of jeans and let him in. He’s a good contractor. He brought doughnuts. He has cool tools and brings doughnuts. I think my kids like him better than me..

The Puddinette was already in full Sunday morning mode by the time I returned to our room after overseeing doughnut distribution and discussing a couple of things with The Contractor. She was showered, dressed, and changing the The Attitude, who had again starting his morning by rudely complaining to Elmo.

I did the only sensible thing and slipped back into bed. My eldest came into the room twenty minutes later and inquired, “when are you going to get up, sleepyhead?”.

My children, being seven years old and younger, have little respect or understanding for the necessity of an extra half hour of sleep. To them, if the sun has risen above the horizon, well, then it’s awake time, by golly! I will be certain to remind them of my rough Sunday morning treatment when they’re teenagers, if I’m up in time.

I actually suspect the Puddinette put The Puddinpop up to it this morning. She has less tolerance for my return-to-bed antics than they kids do, largely because a) there are many To-Do lists on hand, which cannot be checked off while dozing, b) she’s jealous that I’m gifted with the ability to fall asleep within minutes of making the decision to do so, and c) she fears her family will find out someday that I’m actually a shiftless layabout and not the Perfect Son-In-Law spoken of in prophesy.

To any of my in-laws reading this post, I was actually up at 6 am this morning, working at the soup kitchen. Everything else is purely for comedic effect.

When I did finally drag my sorry self out of bed, I found The Attitude attending to the ritual removal of The Puddinette’s many Creams of Unknown Purpose from one of the drawers in the master bathroom. She looked on, chuckling, as he arranged the various tubes in a meticulously straight line on the side of the bathtub.

No, we have no idea why our 17 month-old is compelled to act in such a manner. What I do know is that God help you if you interrupt the Removal and Arrangement of Tubes of Cream. The kids is cute as a button, but he’s also smack in the Full Body Tantrum phase that precedes the terrible twos. His ability to drop to the floor while crying inconsolably rivals that of a sorority girl at a kegger after badly losing a game of quarters over a bottle of MD 20/20 and subsequently finding out that her high school boyfriend is cheating on her three states to the north. Luckily, he only cries for a few minutes and gets up of his own accord. Also, no one needs to hold his hair back for him.

pud’n