My Morning Mess

This morning Bronwen woke up at 4:55am. That is totally unacceptable. I tried to ignore her crying for a while, but eventually, Dan got up and brought her into our bed. I usually don’t like having her in the bed with us because if she is awake she will poke me in the face repeatedly until I finally wake up. This morning was different though. She snuggled in between us a fell asleep, for about 90 minutes. At 6:30 she got out of bed and left the bedroom. Dan put the baby-gate up in the doorway leading to the kitchen and crawled back into bed. We promptly fell back asleep.

When the alarm went off at 7:00am I jumped out of bed and ran into the living room, calling for Bronwen. I realized that we had slept for 30 minutes while she was wandering around and I was nervous. What disaster would be awaiting me in the next room?

“Bronwen? What are you doing?” I called to her. A little voice, choked with a pacifier responded from the living room,

“Bwook.”

She held up a magazine and smiled.

“Oh, you’re reading a book. Very good then,” and I dragged myself into the shower.

After a quick shower I opened the bathroom door to find Bronwen dragging her little chair across the room towards the coffee table. I surreptitiously watched her from around the corner while she worked her chair up over the carpet, around the kids bike and up to the table next to the magazines. It was then she sensed me watching and looked up. I jumped out at her and smiled. She smiled back. She then leaned down behind the table, and lifted her arm into the air and started to sprinkle something on the floor? Sand? What is that?

I walked over to her to find a mess of previously undiscovered proportions. Bronwen had the salt bowl on the floor. Salt was EVERYWHERE! Dan’s shoes were full of salt, salt mingled with the magazines on the table, salt melted in the pool of water Bronwen had dumped on the floor, salt was on the couch, salt was stuck to her feet and hands. Salt stuck to her chair. I grabbed the near empty salt bowl and half empty cup of water and returned them to higher ground in the kitchen. I removed Bronwen from the scene and set her up with melon for breakfast while I went back to the bathroom to get ready. I did not clean up the mess, I am sure it is still there. I just couldn’t deal with it this morning.

A few minutes later, Bronwen, munching on a cube of melon walked into the bathroom. It was then that I discovered, to my horror, that her mouth was caked with salt.

“Were you eating salt?” I shouted at her in disbelief.

“Gurg,” was all she replied.