A typical morning these days goes like this:

Sometime around 7am, Olive starts wiggling and chirping. She's not unhappy, or hungry, or bothered at all; it's just that it's light out now, and she's excited to begin a new day. She's in bed with us now, because at some point in the night Christina took her there to feed her, and then fell asleep before putting her back in the sidecar.

After some intense and ostentatious displays of cuteness, Olive finally earns a response: I prop my head up from the pillow, bleary-eyed, and wave to her: "gmorn-n, kiddo." I then fall back asleep.

Olive is undeterred; she knows that this is a sign of progress. Chirps and squeaks evolve into yelps and squeals, and she starts batting Christina repeatedly in whichever body part is closest. After only a few minutes of this, Christina wakes up for the fifth or sixth time in the night. This time, it's morning, and Olive isn't hungry, so she's off the hook. She gives her own now-traditional wake-up greeting: "Pete... Do you want to change her diaper?"

No, I do not want to change her diaper, I want to stay asleep. Still, it's incontrovertible that Christina's been up more in the night than I have, feeding Olive on demand, so most of the time I get up and change the diaper. From there, everyone is up, and our mornings proceed according to tradition.

It's not a bad way to wake up, all things considered; it's certainly nicer than the trio of alarm clocks which I needed in the Army! The only downside is that I can't schedule Olive to go off when I want her to.

Thanksgiving isn't really a thing here in Germany, but my mother in law offered to have us over last weekend, and she made a German variant of the traditional meal¹: a baked goose with Klöße², Blaukraut³, Wirsing⁴, and gravy. She also offered to take Olive in the morning and give Christina and I the chance to sleep.

Yesterday, therefore, when Olive started doing her early thing, we headed it off quickly by delivering her to the kitchen where my mother in law was already drinking her coffee. Next thing we knew, Christina and I were waking up rested for the first time in ages. First things first: how is Olive? She's a bit hungry, but not upset. Great! What time is it? Half past one in the afternoon.