How To Wake Up A Princess

Getting out of bed on Sunday mornings is hard.  Getting Leah out of bed on Sundays is even harder.

Now that I run the sound system at church on Sundays, I have to be there by 8 o'clock.  This is a huge change from our previous routine which landed us in town about five minutes before church started.  There has been more than one occasion in which we've had to sneak in through the back and quietly slip in to our seats. Quietly slipping isn't so easy when you're dragging along two girls in Sunday dresses that swish and swoosh with every footstep and a boy with the energy of a Chihuahua on Red Bull.

Last Sunday it was about 7:40 and everybody was up and ready to go.  Everybody except Leah.  She's like her Daddy.  We're not morning people.

So I go in to her room and try to wake her up.  "Leah, it's time to wake up.  Leah.  It's time for church.   Let's wake up Leah.  Time to get dressed."  Her response was less than enthusiastic:

It's at this point that I remember how much I hated when my Mom would wake me up whether it be for school or church.  She'd pop her head in the door and say, "Pooh Bear, it's time to wake up Pooh Bear."  God, how I hated that.  To this day, I despise all things Winnie the Pooh and I can appreciate Eeyore's suicidal tendencies.  But my hatred of hearing that each morning is where the genius lies.

The sooner I woke up, the sooner she'd stop saying "Pooh Bear" in that annoying, drawn-out tone.  I shudder just thinking about it.

Then I realized, despite her annoying methods, maybe Mom could help me rouse Leah from her sleep.  We sit next to Grandma every week at church.  It's a fun-filled hour that's full of coloring, stickers, and little baggies of Goldfish crackers for each kid.  Grandma is a big hit on Sunday mornings.  I try again.

"Leah, do you want to go see Grandma?"