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Christmas Morning, Paint by Number
7:15 a.m. Slept in. Stumble into the kitchen to brew some coffee.
7:24 a.m. Sounds of impending doom, aka children’s footsteps, invade that quiet space in my brain that coffee hasn’t filled yet.
24 minutes and 47 seconds. Amount of time it takes between the girl’s waking moment and my house being completely obliterated by a ribbon, princess, Grinch, and troll snowball orgy of paper confetti.
Coffee is now cold.
20 seconds later. Time it takes before someone asks, “What’s next?”
30 seconds later. First kid begs for breakfast.
2 minutes later. Time when the first cookie is consumed.
4 minutes and 30 seconds. The amount of time elapsed before frustration kicks in. “This is dumb and I’m not doing it!”
Every 5 minutes, all morning long. Time between fire-alarm screams for the scissors from another room.
3 minutes. How long it takes to locate scissors between uses.
Reheated coffee is cold again.
29 minutes. Time before first meltdown over being one C battery short of making all of her dreams come true.
46 minutes. How long it takes two adults to build the “expert” marble run.
