When I was little, I was the ultimate morning person.  I used to wake up at 3am, ready to start the day.  According to my mother, I would play quietly by myself until the rest of the house joined me. I loved mornings.  My favourite thing was to watch the National Anthem on the TV as they started programming for the day. I remembering shivering in anticipation as the clock ticked closer and closer to the moment when the American flag would wave on the screen and "Oh say can you see" would play.  Wasn't I special, I would think, that I was up before everyone else...before even the TV woke up.

Some time in the last few years, mornings have become loathed and dreaded.  Waking up well before 5am to the sounds of "MUMMY! COME ON!" or having a 4 year old lean over me, breathing heavily into my face as I sleep, are not the sun salutations with which I would like to greet the day.

A lot happens in our house before 8am...breakfast and second breakfast, cartoons, races, grumping, lego, drawing, emails, getting dressed, laundry, coffee and more coffee.

Maybe if we started singing the National Anthem, I'd be more pleasant about it all...