A Happy Saturday Morning

I wake up to the sound of a happy, farty baby and it makes me laugh. After persuading Daddy to rise and shine with us, Emmy gets a bath and wears her tiny Hello Kitty t-shirt with just a big fluffy cloth diaper and cover. Anthony eats a chocolate peanut butter cupcake for breakfast. This girl gets a cup of Eight O'Clock coffee. It's my favorite, and, as we have woken in up Joe and Vanessa's new house, the light is shining in softly through all of the clear, perfectly clean windows. I ask Joe if he got the coffee on buy-one-get-one-free at Publix, and he nods knowingly. It was last winter we had the conversation about checking for bogos on a smartphone before going to the store.

Banana. That's a dairy-free breakfast. Petey doesn't get the banana strings this time, but he's got a backyard to run around in for the day. Vanessa is in her Saturday work clothes -- creased denim slacks with a glossy sheen, grey flats, sweater and a necklace. She'll be back soon, though, before lunch, even. An hour after she leaves Joe, he changes into his big boy onesie, a desert tan flight suit. He's not working all day, either, and reminds us that he gets paid double on weekends now that he's a civilian.

Emmy goes down for her morning nap pretty easily, and I snuggle up to Anthony on the couch. Willie Nelson's Stardust album is on the record player, an easy transition from the classic Bob Marley we just had on. We google how ol' Marley died and think that even if it was legal, we wouldn't smoke weed, would we? Nah, it's just a bad road to travel.

Somehow we end up dancing in the kitchen, and I'm reminded that although there's a baby napping upstairs who needs to be changed, nursed and played with for the rest of the day, and although Anthony's phone could ring at any time with the news that one of his soldiers is in trouble and although we have to go food shopping so that we don't crush Joe's deli meat stash with a single blow, we're still just kids dancing in the kitchen and the rest can wait a minute.

That coffee sure was good.