An Ode to Early Mornings

I’ve been starting my days around 5am for the past few weeks — my husband’s got an early wake up for work, and I figure I might as well seize the day too! With a baby coming this fall, I have many more early mornings ahead of me, but I know they’ll look a lot different.

I’m excited, and I’m also taking advantage of the time I have now to enjoy reading, writing, moving, and generally getting things done before logging onto work at 9am.

Here’s what a typical morning has looked like for me these last few weeks:

• Journal, pray, and read from my spiritual book (working through The Seven Storey Mountain by Thomas Merton at the moment)

• Do 30 min of prenatal yoga/stretching and sometimes a strength or sculpt workout on Obé Fitness

• Get ready for the day!

• Take care of some housework or a couple of life admin chores

• Line-edit a chapter of my novel (sometimes I’ll put this off until the evening when I feel like reading more in the morning)

• Make an iced latte and sit down to work on my porch before it gets too hot outside

One of the highlights of my week was on Monday morning when my husband had a few hours to come home after his early wake up. It was only 8am, so we made coffee, heated up some cinnamon rolls leftover from a brunch we hosted on Sunday, and chatted on the porch until I had to start work.

Both of us brought books outside with us, but they went untouched. Simple, sweet moments like that are well-worth the lost reading time.

Here’s to more early mornings like it!