Halloween is over: Want to hear something really scary?
Friday was Halloween – the time when ghosts and goblins roam the earth and the souls of the departed return to frolic with (and frighten) the living. Oooh. Spooky.
But here in the Gav household we have our own version of fright fest ’08 going on.
Peanut is a notoriously early riser. I can probably count on one hand the number of times she’s slept past 6:30 a.m. in her entire life and on most of those days she was sick. But lately, the problem has gotten decidedly worse.
For the last 10 days or so, she’s been waking before 5 a.m. ←That is not a typo. This morning, I wandered down the hall at 5:03 a.m. and noticed her light was on. Peeking through the crack of her closed door, I saw her sitting on her bed surrounded by Barbie dolls and clothes, deep in an elaborate pretend scenario. In other words, she’d been up for quite a while.
Then it hit me, it wasn’t really 5:03 a.m. We didn’t change the clocks before bed last night, so it was actually 4:03 a.m., which – HOLY MOTHER OF GOD WHAT IN THE HELL ARE YOU DOING UP?
Every year, it is the same story. I dread with every fiber of my being the fall changing of the clocks. Unlike the rest of the world, Peanut never adjusts. Her internal “wake up now” clock stays set at the same time of day all year. She rises at 4 a.m., succumbs to exhaustion becoming utterly unbearable around 4:30 or 5 p.m. and can barely stay awake to eat dinner.
It’s a vicious cycle: wake early, zombie walk through the late afternoon, meltdown, pass out before dinner. Repeat. All. Winter. Long.
Tonight — after a meltdown of EPIC proportions where I actually contemplated calling in an exorcist to rid my home of the demon child thrashing, screeching and kicking at me in the bathroom for well over 15 minutes — she crashed face down on the chair in our bedroom and is still there.
I have no doubt she’ll be up around 4 a.m.
Kill. Me. Now.
The only hope I have is that maybe, just maybe, we’ll be able to keep her up until 8:30 or 9 a.m. one night and if so, maybe (fingers crossed) she’ll get pushed back to waking up at 5 a.m. (And you know it’s bad when you’re hoping your child “sleeps in” until 5 a.m.)
I fully blame her father for this. Mark is also a ridiculously early riser. Many a morning I roll over at 4:30 or 5 a.m. to find him already out of bed and if I listen carefully, I can hear him clicking away on the computer down the hall.
At least for the next several months, he’ll have someone to hang out with.
But here in the Gav household we have our own version of fright fest ’08 going on.
Peanut is a notoriously early riser. I can probably count on one hand the number of times she’s slept past 6:30 a.m. in her entire life and on most of those days she was sick. But lately, the problem has gotten decidedly worse.
For the last 10 days or so, she’s been waking before 5 a.m. ←That is not a typo. This morning, I wandered down the hall at 5:03 a.m. and noticed her light was on. Peeking through the crack of her closed door, I saw her sitting on her bed surrounded by Barbie dolls and clothes, deep in an elaborate pretend scenario. In other words, she’d been up for quite a while.
Then it hit me, it wasn’t really 5:03 a.m. We didn’t change the clocks before bed last night, so it was actually 4:03 a.m., which – HOLY MOTHER OF GOD WHAT IN THE HELL ARE YOU DOING UP?
Every year, it is the same story. I dread with every fiber of my being the fall changing of the clocks. Unlike the rest of the world, Peanut never adjusts. Her internal “wake up now” clock stays set at the same time of day all year. She rises at 4 a.m., succumbs to exhaustion becoming utterly unbearable around 4:30 or 5 p.m. and can barely stay awake to eat dinner.
It’s a vicious cycle: wake early, zombie walk through the late afternoon, meltdown, pass out before dinner. Repeat. All. Winter. Long.
Tonight — after a meltdown of EPIC proportions where I actually contemplated calling in an exorcist to rid my home of the demon child thrashing, screeching and kicking at me in the bathroom for well over 15 minutes — she crashed face down on the chair in our bedroom and is still there.
I have no doubt she’ll be up around 4 a.m.
Kill. Me. Now.
The only hope I have is that maybe, just maybe, we’ll be able to keep her up until 8:30 or 9 a.m. one night and if so, maybe (fingers crossed) she’ll get pushed back to waking up at 5 a.m. (And you know it’s bad when you’re hoping your child “sleeps in” until 5 a.m.)
I fully blame her father for this. Mark is also a ridiculously early riser. Many a morning I roll over at 4:30 or 5 a.m. to find him already out of bed and if I listen carefully, I can hear him clicking away on the computer down the hall.
At least for the next several months, he’ll have someone to hang out with.
Labels: Adventures in Parenting, NaBloPoMo, Venting, Who needs sleep?
posted by Kimberly at
7:53 PM
4 Comments:
yikes. why don't you give her a cup of coffee at 4pm? Can't be any worse....JAG
I think perhaps the cruelest thing about parenting, after the whole mortality thing, is the unavoidable issue of being tied to the sleeping habits of someone (or someone*s*) other than yourself.
welcome to my world! I think some people/kids just have weird internal clocks. Mine says sleep all the time :) Little B? He's an early riser, enjoys being up around 5ish. We instituted two things to "help" - pushing his bedtime back until 8:30 (before had been 7:15-7:30) and also telling him that if it's not light out he can't get up (he doesn't always listen to this). Does she nap? I feel for you because Daylight Savings kills me. Oh, the crankiness! Hang in there or rather, send her down the hall to play with Mark!
And I thought it was bad that Zoe was waking up at 6:30.
Nick was all excited about this time change. He just could not understand (no matter how many times I explained it) why I dreaded it. It just took a couple mornings of Zoe up at 5:30 to realize my fears. And when she walks in she announces in a much too chipper tone "It's a sunny day!!!" You'll have to tell me your secret to getting them to stay quietly in their own room.
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