Fresco woke up at 5:30 this morning. Trombone at 5:45. We ignored them until 6:30.
Stage 1 Anger: Holy shit what is WRONG with these children are they sick? Are they trying to destroy me? It’s not even six AM FOR GOD’S SAKE. And now I’m too pissed off to go back to sleep, even with a pillow over my head. Dammit. Dammit. Dammit.
Stage 2 Acceptance: Fine. I’ll get up. Why not. My head hurts anyway. Why does my head hurt? Because it’s morning. Because I’m evil. Who knows. Stupid headache. Whatever. Go downstairs, drink some coffee.
Stage 3 Grumpiness: Where’s the coffee. Don’t talk to me. Where’s the motherfucking coffee. My head hurts. What do you mean I have to bend over to take something out of the fridge so I can get the milk to put in my coffee. Our fridge SUCKS. Where’s the ibuprofen?
Stage 4 Caffeination (and ibuprofenation, in this case): My headache is gone! I feel human! I love you! I am going to write a blog post!
Stage 5 Contentment: The children are so overtired and equally high-needs, yet I am so calm. How amazing am I. It’s because I got some time to myself before they got up. I should get up an hour earlier every day.
Stage 6 Realism: As if. It is really damn dark at 5:30 am. You’ve tried this before. You’ve failed. It ain’t happening.
Stage 7 Bargaining: I could take a coffee maker to my bedroom. And set my alarm for 5:30. I would surely get out of bed if there was coffee *right there*. Or maybe I could just take the kettle upstairs. I could have tea. I could have a teapot full of tea. And watch the sun rise over the mountains. Wouldn’t that be a nice ritual? I would have to go to bed at, like, 8:15, but that’s OK. I could do that. I would get so much done.
Stage 8 Depression: Now it is noon. All the coffee is gone from my blood, the children are still overtired, they probably won’t nap and I might just pass out and drive into a pole.
I guess that would be a problem. But I might end up in a coma. A coma is sleep, right?
Oh, that’s in such poor taste. I am sorry, people in comas.
Now I have to add “stage 9 – whininess” and “stage 10 – inappropriate language” and I really didn’t want to –
But wait? What’s that up in the air? Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Is it Chopper 9? No – it’s REVERB!
Reverb10 Day 13: Action. When it comes to aspirations, its not about ideas. It’s about making ideas happen. What’s your next step? (Author: Scott Belsky)
My next step is to put a kettle and a teapot and some tea on my desk in my bedroom. And maybe a cookie. Tonight I will go to bed at 8:30 and tomorrow I will get up early, sit at my desk, and write. Or cry. Or something.
You have my sympathy. I had one child who didn’t appear to require sleep. My older daughter started sleeping through the night at 6 weeks. At 2 she would put herself to bed when she got sleepy. She loved to sleep. She would happily stay in bed and look at books if she woke up before me. Children like this are rare and wonderful and being my first I didn’t realize how good I had it.
My second child didn’t sleep. Collic until she was 4 months meant never more than two hours sleep at a stretch. At two I would put her to bed at 7:30 and she would be up again every half hour until at least 11. This same child was up bright and cheery by 6 every morning.
But I have words of encouragement. Eventually, they can get up and look after themselves until you rise at a reasonable hour.
And then they hit the teen years and they sleep until noon if you let them.
And then they leave home.
Good luck with the early rising and the quiet time. I could never handle that early rise. I was a night person and looked forward to the time when they were finally asleep and I had time to myself. Now, too many years of getting up for work means I can’t sleep past 7:30 unless I’m sick.
But those few precious minutes all to yourself are so important and I hope you find them at whichever end of the day works for you.
Moira likes to get up before 6 a.m. too and it is PAINFUL. Especially if I’ve been up more than twice with the baby during the night. My only way to cope with it is to go to bed early myself or else I’m cursing her name and spitting in her porridge as she chats happily at the table waiting for first breakfast. Just recently though Moira has started running into the bathroom to get her stool and then running back to her room to turn on her light when she gets up so at least I can wake up slowly instead of having her breathing in my face telling me to get up and make breakfast.
I will hold out hope for waking up early and writing, with little to no crying at ALL.
We are in a shameful sleep spiral right now, which basically involves E going to be at 5 PM–FIVE PEE EM!–and getting up at 4 AM, with a couple of wake-ups in between. Even when we try to wake him up in the evening to “fix” this mess, he refuses. Loudly refuses.
So I put him on the floor next to me to mind his collection of sporks, and I do some freewriting. Or blog commenting, as the case may be.
Agreed with Megan’s comment on another post, you and Reverb are getting along quite nicely!
Reading this post and the comments today was so so perfect after my night of, oh, around 6 wake ups, punctuated by Megan yelling “I’M AWAKE” repeatedly at the top of her lungs at 6:15am.
My fridge sucks too.
“Fresco woke up at 5:30 this morning. Trombone at 5:45. We ignored them until 6:30.” Tell me your secret, it is locks on the doors, isn’t it? Or do you mean they poked your eyes for 45 minutes and you just sat perfectly still and hoped they go away? If so, I applaud your solid effort.
We keep them locked up at night. Fresco is still in a crib (I KNOW!) and Trombone’s room has a safety gate on it. Otherwise, because our bedroom has no door, they would be sniffing us at all hours, just like the cat.