Rise and Shine

I have a confession to make: I hate waking up before 9 a.m. Since having kids, I've clung to sleeping until 7:30 for dear life. My resistance to getting out of my warm, comfy bed was one of the major reasons I love (safe) co-sleeping. Bulldog moved into his own room, right next to ours, when he was about 7 months old, but still comes into bed with us if he's sick, going through sleep regression, etc. Same thing with Babyzilla. If he has a bad dream or doesn't feel well, we welcome him into the space between us, but for the most part, he sleeps in his bed. Mercifully, the boys have little issue sleeping until 7:30 or later, especially if they're snuggled up next to me.

A week from today, I start my internship and the boys start daycare. In order for us to be where we need to be on time, I have to get up by 5:15 a.m. That's over TWO HOURS earlier than I'm used to. Needless to say, I'm not happy about that. Hubby's been after me to start getting up earlier to "train" for the earlier ringing of the alarm clock, but we've all been sick. Now that I'm feeling better, mostly, we've agreed to do dry runs this week. We're going to run through our morning just like we will for the next 4 months.

The Plan:

Hubby will wake up and go to the gym and be back by 6:30. After he gets back, he'll dress the kids and take them to daycare. I'll get up by 5:15, get myself ready, pack lunches for all of us, wake up the boys, and feed them breakfast. I have to be out the door by 6:45 in order to be to the school by 7:15.

Today was the first day of training, but Hubby didn't go to the gym. I don't think he believed I'd actually get out of bed. By placing a second alarm clock across the room, I have to get out of bed. (Brilliant idea by the Hubby.) It worked! I was up and dressed by 5:30. Not bad considering we had two kiddos in bed with us all night. I got Hubby's breakfast and lunch packed while he showered. We tried to wake up the boys for 20 minutes, but they were having none of it. I think they might still have a touch of the bug, so we decided to let them sleep. Of course, 10 minutes after we made that decision, they were up and playing.

I learned 3 things from today's experiment:

1. Clothes need to be picked out the night before.
2. Anything that can be prepacked for lunches needs to be prepacked. We buy raisins from Costco and bag them in snack bags. I'll do the same with carrots, pretzels, hummus, crackers, and anything else that can go in lunchboxes.
3. I don't need to worry about disturbing the boys when I'm getting ready. They'll sleep through anything.