Early Bird

I have always been a good sleeper. Not only do I enjoy my sleep, I NEED my sleep. According to my parents, it took me days to recover from slumber parties when I was younger. Yet, as much as I love to sleep, I also love to stay up late. I just really enjoy that time in the evening after the kids have gone to bed, watching TV or reading in my jammies. So, I love to sleep in. Although it has been many years since I slept until noon, I still have a pretty firm belief that anything before 8 seems early. Maybe by luck, or maybe through a little training, my first child likes to sleep in too. She usually sleeps until at least 8:30, and I must admit if she wakes up before 8 I feel a little annoyed. Why is she up so early?!? When I only had one child, I would wake up early about once a month for one reason or another. And I always said to myself, "I should do this more often! Look at all the things I can get done before she wakes up!" Yet, I always changed my mind the next morning as soon as the alarm went off. I was getting used to my slow mornings as a stay-at-home mom.

And then my son was born. Somehow, he did not get the sleep-in gene. I probably should have screened for that when getting married. As a newborn, he would sometimes wake up before 5:00, ready to play. I half-way accepted this and hoped he would soon fall into a more normal routine. And he did. Normal for most people that is. But to me, 7:00 is still way too early to be up. In fact, I have a rule that if he gets up before 7:00, I put him back in his bed after I nurse him. He almost always talks for a few minutes and then falls back asleep for a short while.

So, this morning when he was chatting away in his crib at 6:15, my first reaction was, "You have to be kidding me! I am not getting up at 6:15!" I nursed him and he went right back into the bed. He was in the room next to us, so I turned the monitor off and climbed back in bed. If he didn't go back to sleep, he would eventually start talking and wake me up. I just needed a few more minutes to close my eyes.....

Or maybe I needed another few hours. I woke up at the clock said 8:30. "Good," I thought, feeling so proud of myself, "He must have gone back to sleep" I turned on the monitor to confirm and to my surprise, he was just silently kicking in bed. Oh my gosh! Had he gone back to sleep? Had he been awake the whole time? Did I really abandon him in his crib for 2 hours? Why didn't I just get up at 6:15 in the first place? But I have to admit, a part of me was still glad that I had slept in.

As babies always do, when I leaned over his crib to get him, his whole face lit up. He was so excited to see his Mommy and didn't care what had happened in the last 2 hours. I will never know if he slept or not and I realize that it doesn't matter. He loves him Mommy and I love my early bird. Even at 6:00 in the morning.