Saturday morning at the Hooglands

Dana is our household's earliest riser. She tends to wake up around 6:00, sometimes even a few minutes before. We've tried various methods of dealing with our dear early bird, but she will not be deterred. We tried just leaving her in bed until we are ready to wake up. Her protests eventually wake the whole house, usually before 6:30 anyway, so that's a no go. We've tried simply getting up at 6:00. Sometimes this is okay, but generally we go to bed too late to make 6:00 a viable start time for our day. For a while, we would get her out of bed, sit her on the floor in the living room, surrounded by toys, give her bottle to her, and go back to bed. Invariably, she would poop a half hour later and fuss until someone came to change her. So lately, we've been giving her a bottle in her crib (gasp!! The good parent police are going to come arrest me, I know) and then.... she falls back to sleep!!! :)
So we did this yesterday, and then she woke up around 8:00. We were feeling lazy, so then after a diaper change, we set her on the floor in the living room and crawled back in bed. Abigail came upstairs and started playing with Dana. A few minutes later, we hear Dana start to cry, and Abigail's little feet come running down the hall to our bedroom. She comes to my side of the bed, and says "Dana's crying!" (As if we can't hear this ourselves.) I tell her "go see what's the matter." Feet go plunking down the hall. We hear Abigail in a high, singsongy voice "Dana, what's the matter??" Dana keeps crying. Abigail runs down the hallway. "Dana's sad." I say, "why's she crying?" More footfalls... "Dana, why are you crying?? Don't cry." Abigail comes back... "Dana needs a bottle!" :) We just had to laugh. You can almost see the wheels turning in Abigail's head in situations like this.