But many mornings are not so easy. Leo will not get out of bed. When he does finally get out of bed, Leo moves downstairs at a mind numbing, glacial pace. When asked what he wants for breakfast, the only answer is a furious and incredulous “No!” Even the beloved eggs are met with fury.
Luckily, Leo has always been fairly resilient. I believe his teacher would refer to him as "easily redirected." I wouldn’t exactly call Leo moody, but if there is an upside to his sometime mood swings, it’s that as quickly as he moves from incredulousness to be being asked what he wants for breakfast, that’s how swiftly he becomes cheerful. He’s only human. When he's angry he's very, very angry. And when he's happy? He's a sweetheart. No big news here.
So this morning it was a relief when Leo had successfully shaken the grouchiness and was finally dressed in his underwear and socks and settled comfortably on the couch and in front of the coffee table with his plate of scrambled eggs (the final shirt and pants go on after breakfast is completed—trust me, I’m a veteran ketchup stain remover). Have no doubt though, there was certainly a battle to get just that minimal amount of clothing on and just to do so there were plenty of threats to turn off the TV, to take away the eggs. He comes around. Eventually.
But today, I just knew. When I looked at the clock and it was 7:40 and Leo was still just wearing socks and underwear and Leo’s bus can come anywhere between 7:45 and 8:00 a.m. Well I knew. For the first time this year, I would be driving Leo to school myself. Certainly not the end of the world but not the most convenient turn of events either.
Sure enough, Leo’s bus pulled up at about 7:47. I did my best to wrestle the clothes quickly on him. Today he was to wear a new, quite adorable button down shirt decorated with gecko lizards. I thought the fact that some of these lizards happened to be yellow might entice Leo to get dressed quicker (maybe we would make the bus that was pulling up outside the house at this-very-moment?).
But Leo started arguing with me and stomping his feet and saying something I couldn’t understand. At first I thought he just wanted to wear a yellow shirt (an almost daily request). The next thing I knew he was running upstairs. Awesome. Keep in mind the bus was, a this very moment, outside our house. The reminder honk was imminent.
I dashed outside and across the lawn and asked the driver in the sweetest possible voice I could muster, if he could come back in five or ten minutes, maybe pick up a few more kids and swing back to get Leo (knowing full well this was totally not going to happen).
And sure enough it did not happen. The driver shook his head apologetically and shrugged his shoulders and I sped back to the house for Plan B.
When I returned inside, Leo was standing at the bottom of the stairs grinning proudly ear-to-ear, holding a tiny rubber gecko lizard. That’s what he’d run upstairs to get. He wanted to wear bring his lizard, in honor of his lizard shirt. Makes perfect sense, really. And why hadn't I thought of that?
Except for the fact that Leo tried to melt like a wet noodle into his car seat when one of the aides tried to extricate him from the car in the “kiss and go” lane at school, this story has a mostly happy ending. Leo got to school, eventually, rubber gecko and all. And I guess considering this is the first time we've ever "missed" the bus and it's almost May, well that's pretty good, right? RIGHT?
These are the days, when I finally do get to work, my first question is: Is it lunch time yet? Or better yet, happy hour?
No gecko here, just lunch bag turned silly hat. Leo is almost always game to make people laugh. And in Leo's eyes, almost anything can be a hat.
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