I'm what you might call a "slow waker-upper." All members of my family will vouch for this one. My dad used to crank classical music to wake me up as a teenager. My husband complains that I have to hit the snooze button three times before I even notice that my alarm went off. (Fortunately, he needs to get up before me 95% of the time, and, unlike him, I can sleep through his alarm or fall back to sleep immediately when it does wake me.)

So, while I have a loose goal of actually being up and dressed before my kids get up every day, more often than not I am just about ready to crawl out of bed when I hear them pounding across the kitchen floor on their way to my room. They then proceed to either a) crawl into bed beside me in Jason's "dip" (we need a new mattress set in the worst way) while they wake up, or b) jump over me, around me, or on me with an abundance of energy that makes coffee jealous until I get tired of it and kick them all out so I can actually get up and get dressed, or c) all of the above.

Jabin, by virtue of being not as heavy or rough as his older brothers, does not get kicked out as frequently as they. In fact, since he still likes to crawl up on my chest and cuddle with me, I usually treasure our morning time together, knowing that it won't be much longer and cuddling with Mom will be blasé and he will have much better things to do.

This morning, as he woke me up with the sunshine in his smile, I asked him, "Are you always going to be this sweet?"

"Yes," he said, sweetly of course, grinning from ear to ear.

"I'm going to hold you to that," I said, winking, and gave him a big, wistful hug.