Tuesday, July 26, 2011

A lazy summer tradition

You may remember me telling you how I dread summer vacation because my boys need routine. For the first time ever, I am happy to report a new summer tradition that stemmed out of my exhaustion and general laziness. I know…it’s hard to believe that I could possibly be lazy, especially considering my caffeine consumption levels! Well, I’ve been struggling a little bit with insomnia recently and so the thought of sleeping in holds a great deal of appeal to me (even more than usual).

Let me warn you: I’m going to jump around a little bit, but stick with me. It will all make sense. First, let me set the background.

We don’t have traditional TV at our house, per se. Let me explain. Our main living area has a TV that is connected to our computer and we stream video online instead of pay the cable company their blood money. We were forced to make some drastic cuts in our budget when my husband lost his job 2 years ago and our cable bill was one of the first things on the chopping block.

Do I miss high-def? You better believe it! Do I miss some shows that I cannot access online reliably? Yeah, it can be frustrating. Do I sometimes complain about how streaming online can be a pain in the backside? All the time. Do I like free TV? Of course! Helloooooo…I am the Queen of Clearance, so free is a price I like to pay. Now, if I could only convince the cable company to drop our high-speed internet prices, I’d be set.

With that being said, I have a confession to make. And, to all of my local friends and neighbors who might be reading this, PLEASE do not tattle on me.
When we first moved into this house we set up cable to only one jack since we only had one TV. When we upgraded our TV to an HDTV prior to the digital TV conversion that affected everyone in the US, we didn’t know what to do with our old TV. We remembered that we had a cable jack in our bedroom but we never had an opportunity to try it to see if it worked or not. We thought that we could use our old TV for DVD’s so we put it in our bedroom and, on a whim, we plugged in the coax cable to see if anything happened. We had cable! All those years and we had no idea! Talk about a pleasant surprise. Free TV felt awesome knowing how many thousands of dollars we had sunk into our cable bills over the years. Our old TV has since gone away, but we got a small new TV to take its place since we continued to have cable to our bedroom.

So, now we come to the main part of our story. We left off with me telling you about how lazy I am. Are you up to speed? Good.
Since we are now on summer break I no longer need to use an alarm clock. My kids serve as their own alarm clocks. No matter how late they go to sleep they are always awake early in the morning. I wish they would sleep in, but no such luck. So, in the interest of attempting to sleep in a few minutes longer I told the boys to crawl into bed with me and I would turn on the TV so they could watch cartoons on PBS.


Here’s where it gets good. They listened to me. They have never been much for cuddling, but I was amazed when they crawled into bed, got under the covers and quietly watched cartoons. It has been a long time since they last watched cartoons like that, so they knew they had a good thing going.
I actually fell back asleep and woke up 2 hours later. They were still watching cartoons. It was a miracle. I was so happy that I showered them with hugs and decided to forego our regular breakfast routine and offer them a special treat for such good behavior. They were thrilled and we had a fabulous morning.

The next day the boys crawled into bed with me hoping to once again watch cartoons in bed while I slept in. I quickly fell back asleep and woke up to Prince Charming telling me to be quiet. Apparently I was snoring and it was interrupting their cartoons.
Since that time we have done our morning cartoon routine many times and it has become a summer tradition. I love it! Sometimes one of the boys will lay their head on me or let me wrap my arm around them as I fall back asleep. I am in a sleepy state of bliss when this happens and it’s nice to get some cuddles in with my boys.

I look forward to fall because school starts back up and the boys can get back into their routine, but I assure you that I will sorely miss our morning cartoon time. I’m going to get as many of those mornings in as I can while I still have some summer left.        
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