I don’t recall having this issue when Ethan was an infant or even last year. But neither Ethan nor Alex get this concept of daylight savings time (let’s be honest, I don’t really get it either but I do know that I was supposed to get extra sleep last weekend….NOT).
So Sunday morning I had hopes of sleeping till at least 7 – which was really 8 before time changed. Nope, Alex was up at 5:20, 6:20 before the time change….that’s still early for him so we tried to get him back to sleep. He was having no part of that even though he’d been up late the night before with trick-or-treating. We finally get him back to sleep at almost 7 (the original time I thought he’d wake me up). He’s in bed with us at this point in hopes that he wouldn’t wake his brother. 30 minutes later I hear Ethan wake up to go pee and expect him to come wake me which is his norm. Nope, he goes to play. Fantastic.
He does sometimes play a bit on weekend mornings before waking his brother and then coming to tell me Owix is awake. This morning, Alex was in bed with me so Ethan couldn’t wake him so I thought I’d get another 30 minutes to an hour. I could still hear him in my half sleep phase and it sounded like he was in his room playing. About 30 minutes later, he comes in with a pack of Whoppers and says “Mama, I can’t open this.” I open my eyes now and there he is trying to climb up in the bed with a pack of candy in his hands. His speaking woke Alex anyway so I say in my best chastising voice, “Ethan Tanner Waters, have you been eating candy?” He says “yes” and I ask how much. He says, “One….two…two pieces.” “No more candy until after lunch…you do NOT eat candy first thing in the morning.”
The way our stairs are laid out, from our bedroom if someone is at the bottom of the stairs, it sounds just like they are in the hallway outside our bedroom door playing. So while I thought he’d been playing right inside his bedroom door, he’d actually been at the base of the stairs in the recliner in his candy basket. OK, so now we’re all up – it’s 8:00 (9:00 had the time not changed – yeah doing the 2 times is obnoxious to me as well now) and we head downstairs. Downstairs I tell Ethan to bring me the wrappers from the candy he ate….you guessed it, not 2 pieces but 6. He’d have eaten more except that he couldn’t get the packs open. So this ended our first morning on the new time….now let’s move to the evening.
The boys’ bedtime is 8:00, Alex would go down at 7:30 if I let him but I make him wait so he sleeps just a little bit longer in the morning which does normally work. To say Alex was less than thrilled that 8:00 came an hour later this day would be a major under statement. We watched “Monsters vs. Aliens” with Ethan (a surprisingly good and not scary movie despite the image the title brings to mind) and let Alex toddle around but he eventually passed out in my lap before making it to that 8:00 mark.
Progress to Monday morning….with the time change, the sun rises earlier. Ethan has the deluded opinion that when the sun wakes up, he should, too. He also thinks that if he’s up, his brother needs to be (an issue we are really trying to break). Not even 6:00am and I hear Alex wake up. I roll over to go get Alex and Ethan (who I normally hear walking into the room) is standing right there – scared the crap out of me. I tell Ethan to go potty and head in to get Alex. I bring Alex in to Steve and try to get him to go back to sleep while telling Ethan to turn off the bathroom light and go back to bed. Yes, I realize I need to wake up soon to go to work but really I need about 30 more minutes – I don’t get a nap, they do. I give up on Alex and head in to Ethan’s bed and crawl in….Ethan follows me and wants to watch TV. I ask him to please just crawl in bed behind me and let me sleep 15 more minutes and then I’ll turn the TV on when I get in the shower. Finally my alarm starts going off which means it’s 6:45 – both boys have been up for an hour…or so I thought. Alex – the little twerp – went back to sleep with Steve as soon as I left; apparently, he just wanted more room in the bed to go back to sleep. I get ready for work and get Ethan juice and turn on Disney for him before heading out the door. Alex woke up about 5 minutes later so at least Steve didn’t get much more sleep than I did. I get a bit of satisfaction for this at least.
Tuesday morning…both boys again up EARLY – around 6:30 – this time Alex would have slept a bit longer but Ethan had other plans. He even said that he woke brother up because the sun was up. We told him again this time that if he wakes up before us, he needs to play quietly and not wake up his brother. If his brother wakes up on his own, then Ethan can wake everyone else up. Tonight it was dark when I picked them up from daycare at 6 (granted that was about 30 minutes later than usual but it was still getting dark at 5:30) so this was the perfect time to try to explain to Ethan. He said to me, “Mama? It’s bedtime? The moon is out.” I said, “Yes honey, the moon is out but no, it isn’t bedtime yet.” I explained that the sun wakes up earlier than it used to and the moon comes out earlier. But when the sun wakes up, it’s not time for him to wake up yet that he still needs a little more sleep to make sure he gets enough rest and isn’t tired. When the moon comes out, it’s time for the sun to go to bed but he can stay up a little bit longer. Mama & Daddy will tell him when it’s time to go to sleep. And when he wakes up in the morning, he should not wake up his brother because his brother needs a little bit more sleep than he does so if Alex is still asleep, he needs to be very quiet and let him sleep. He “said” ok to this but we’ll see tomorrow how that works out for me. I’m really not so delusional that I truly believe he’ll get this concept right away but both he & Alex need to get it soon because waking up at 5:30 and 6:00 is not good for me or for those I deal with throughout the day. I am by no means a morning person. Shew – bedtime!
I have some other cute stories from the past couple of days with the boys but due to the previous 3 mornings early wake ups, I need to head to bed now.
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