Too Early for Hide & Seek

I've never been much of a morning person. Yeah, I'm forced to be one at times but given the choice I'd stay up all night and sleep until 9 or 10 a.m. Most of you know that I work at night so when that alarm goes off at 7:30 a.m. it's can be a while before I'm fully awake and aware of what's going on. I go into an autopilot mode of sorts - get up, stagger down the hall, wake up Noah, get Noah's clothes for the day, make the boys breakfast, make Noah's lunch, etc.

So this morning I walk into the boy's room and look over towards Oliver's bed, he usually greets me with a perky, "HI Momma! I awake too." There was no greeting and once my eyes focused a little bit I realized he wasn't in his bed (please excuse big brothers dirty sock that, I am sure, was tossed on there last night).

Being in my not-a-morning-person stupor my first thought was, how in the heck do you lose a toddler? Then I started wondering if I was playing a game of hide and seek and just didn't realize it in my pre-coffee state. For a brief moment I started to panic and that quickly woke me up a bit... listen for the TV that Ollie will turn on if he wakes up before the rest of us, no, I don't hear the TV, scan the floor to see if he rolled off of his bed, no, he's not on the floor, look at Noah's bed to see if he climbed in there, no, that looks normal too. No, wait, that bundle under the covers looks a little bit bigger than it should. I step closer, re-focus my eyes a bit and sure enough, there he is curled up with big brother. An extra sweet moment considering the two of them have really been fighting lately and probably a moment that I wasn't supposed to see. No self respecting, almost 8 year old boy wants anyone to know that when his little brother got scared last night he brought him into his bed to make him feel safe. Shhh, don't tell him I told you okay?