In previous years I always prided myself on being “the cool mom” who let my kids stay up late. They’d pass out when tired and I’d surpass them with my binge-Netflix marathons and catch up on my favorite video games. Since adults need less sleep than the little ones, it would work out in my favor because I could stay up until the early hours of the morning and still get enough sleep before the kids would rise around 10 or 11am. Everyone got enough sleep, we just weren’t active morning people.
Now that my daughter has chosen to go back to public school, she has to adjust to waking up in the morning. I do too. So I changed my routine to go to bed at 11 (she goes to bed at 8:30). My husband works the 8-5 grind, so he wakes up around 6am and I get up at 7 with my oldest to help her get ready for school and off to the bus. When she was in Kindergarten I would crawl back into bed and sleep until 11 with my then-baby. I’ve decided to shake it up this year.
Waking up with time to spare with my husband is nice. I arrive in the living area refreshed and plan for the day. We chat a few chats together and kiss each other good-bye. I prepare my daughter for the day, and off she goes. So here I sit with a miraculous 3-4 hours of “me” time in which I can do whatever I want.
I was spoiled at first because my toddler would still sleep until 10:30 or so. Lately he’s been waking up and asking me to snuggle him again. Then today he woke up before anyone left the house at 7:15am. He insisted on staying awake and here I am without any “me” time and his demands already have me exhausted.
But maybe he’ll nap today?
Probably not. In reality we’ve slowly moved from energized mom who feels super productive, to dramatic evenings because somebaby didn’t get enough sleep and suffers from extreme F.O.M.O. The quality of dinner is suffering, because the simplest requests turn into life or death scenarios by 5pm.
I feel a late night regression coming on, if anything just to reset this mad-man toddler child. And of course, that time change did not help one bit.
