What?!?!

This morning, like many mornings when I am not opening the store, I was awakened by Johnny's chatter.  His morning modus operandi is that he wakes up in the crib and calmly starts running his fingernails over the mattress.  If that raspy sound fails to get a response, he moves on to some soft cooing and ba-ba-ba-ing.  When that too fails to get him any attention, he begins to increase the volume incrementally every few minutes.  This morning, his ritual began at about 5:05 AM, so I had to respond quickly to prevent him from waking the whole house.  I would say his volume got to about a 6 out of 10 before I retrieved him from his crib (and at 5:05 AM a 6 in volume sounds more like a 12).    I brought him to the living room & fed him. Then he fell back asleep in my arms, allowing me to catch a little more sleep myself.  Before long has passed, I was asleep on the couch with Johnny in my arms.

Suddenly, I was startled awake again by our little man's terrified squealing tears.  Heart racing, I looked him over carefully as he sobbed to make sure he was OK.  He was fine, but appeared to be very frightened.  I think he had a nightmare, and it took me about 10 minutes to calm him down.  Needless to say, my nerves were shot by the time he was nearly back to sleep.  Glancing at the clock, I saw it was a little after 7:00 AM.  I put him in his activity chair & went to check on Erin to make sure she was up for school.  Peaking in on her, I saw she was mostly dressed and was watching Spongebob. I could hear the shower running in the bathroom, and assumed Laureen was getting ready for work.  Erin looked up at me, and I mustered the best sleep-deprived smile I could and said, "Good Morning Sweetie."

Her response was one word.  She looked up at me with what can only be described as an impatient look on her face, and she blurted out, "WHAT?!?!"

Now this was not a "what" as in "I'm sorry I didn't hear what you said" or "I beg your pardon".  This particular "what" was more along the lines of "What do you want" or "what are you looking at". 

"Excuse me?" I asked somewhat incredulously.

Clearly aware that she had overstepped her bounds, Erin tried to backtrack a little, softening her tone and smiling a weak smile.  She asked me, "I mean, what do you want?"

"Nothing, Erin.  I wanted nothing except to say good morning to you.  Sheesh."

"Oh... well then good morning."