I woke this morning at 4.45 (naturally, no alarm) and was SO looking forward to 1-2 hours to myself before my kids woke up. As you can probably guess from the title of this post: THIS DID NOT GO WELL.
How I imagined my morning to look. Photo by Wix.
I had fallen asleep soon after my kids (age 3 and 6) last night at about 9, and because of this had not had any time to myself last night.
This morning I was looking forward to my morning routine: to doing Wordle, reading blogs, working on my novel a little, and doing some work on my laptop (this is a VERY busy week at work). All while drinking coffee, of course.
The first half an hour went well, I drank my first coffee, did Wordle (in 4, not amazing but oh well), read a couple of blogs, texted a bit. Then it starts- a kid calling out half asleep. It’s 3 year old O, I ignore hope he goes back to sleep but it gets worse, so I bring him out with me. He stays a bit upset, but gradually settles next to me on the couch covered in a blanket. Then just as he falls back asleep
at 5.40, E starts to call out, she’s woken now, also too early for her body clock. She comes out, wants to cuddle, but she’s cold. She tries to pull off O’s blanket, and HE STARTS TO WAKE BACK UP.
I panic and send E to get her own blanket. I then move into the kids bedroom to sit on a bed (so I don’t disturb Al who is blissfully sleeping through all this), and E comes to snuggle in next to me. But she can’t get comfortable and keeps tossing and turning and basically driving me crazy. I may have been muttering grumpily to myself about kids that don’t sleep at this point. Sigh.
She FINALLY settles and both kids are back asleep at 6.30, but now my CATS start meowing for breakfast. I go to feed them so their meows don’t wake the kids, but O is next to the kitchen and the sounds of the plates WAKES HIM UP. Arrghhh.
This boy is ALWAYS hungry, and vocal about it!
So I call my attempt at solo morning zen time a complete fail and decide to write this post instead, with Owen awake next to me on the couch, with more coffee.
At least the cuddles are nice.
Does anyone else have these kid (or other) challenges to their morning routine (or another routine - evening, weekend etc)? It’s the unpredictability I find SO challenging. I know my kids are young but they’re not NEWBORN so why is it still so unpredictable? Why do I read on other blogs people happily doing elaborate 5am routines with their young kids asleep? Am I doing something wrong? Should I just order my kids back to bed? That doesn’t seem to work for them, they just want comfort from me at that time. Or perhaps it’s learnt and needs to be unlearnt. Thoughts welcome.