Mornings with Chunky

The mornings are really starting to fall into a routine. Mariana starts rolling around, googooing and gaagaaing around 6 - 6:30 am. I often wake up and hear her through the monitor. Normally I've got tissue stuffed up my nose to stop the whistling that Dr. Mehta gave me when he "corrected" my deviated septum. Thanks Jackass. My ears are plugged because the neurotic pit bull in the yard just outside our bedroom windows has been squealing and wailing all night. Probably I gave up trying to ignore the noise at around 1am and resorted to the ear plugs. So when I awake at 6 to the muffled sounds of my daughter I feel like I'm in a sensory deprivation chamber, albeit a lousy one. Once I've dispensed with the plugs and nose tampon, I try to go back to sleep with mixed results often lying awake until 715 when I have to actually get up and start our day. I go downstairs, feed the cat, make Mariana's bottles for the day, put away the coffee table, lay out the blanket, prepare my cereal bowl and head back upstairs to get my lil' girl. Sometimes awake already, sometimes face down and drooling she wakes up with a big smile every day. Within 10 seconds she sits up and utters her first word "Cat!". Does she just love the cat or is she just happy to use the only word she knows how to say? Since our cat is completely anti-social and prone to hissing at our new bundle of joy I'm inclined to think the latter. Either way she is always smiley and heart burstingly cute. We go to the bathroom for a diaper a change and then downstairs for a little Daddy/daughter time. I feed her her first bottle which she usually takes and drinks on her own now. It's sort of the calm before the storm. I can stare at her and talk to her and play with her hair and she's occupied with the bottle so she sits still. If the cat should happen to walk by she'll start saying cat with a mouthful of bottle. "grgrcagrat!" he he She's funny.