Sunday, February 24, 2008

Midnight Blogging

Okay, so the title of this post is a bit of a misnomer, given that it's 3:15 am as I write. I had planned to post about preschooler sleep issues. But instead I have discovered that it's me. I'm the one who has trouble. At least tonight.

Lately Casey has been waking up in the 5:00 am time range. It's still dark. And it's much too early. We've tried sending him back to bed. He refuses. We've tried letting him just get up and play. But he gets into stuff, especially now that he knows how to open the baby locks in the kitchen. We've tried telling him not to get up before his clock says 6:00. But then he thinks any time he sees the number six, he's complying. I've tried covering the second two digits on the clock, but he's uncovered it.

So what to do? I mean short of locking him in his room, of course. He'd crawl over a gate (or figure out how to open it).

And this begs the question, I think-- will we ever resume any sort of normal sleep pattern? When we decided to become parents, people warned us about all sorts of things. And sleeplessness was one of them. But we thought that would last the first couple years. Not five. And truth be told, Casey has, up until now been a really good sleeper. Still, I can't help but wonder if we could be improving this 5-ish wake-up call time.

Any thoughts?

3 comments:

Andrea M said...

I've only recently gotten my 21 month old to sleep past five am. I did 5 months of the 5 am wake-up call. I've just tried to make sure she runs around more during the day and is more active so she will sleep more at night. She goes to bed about 7 now and gets up about 6.
Good luck!

Anonymous said...

My brother Nick was a morning person too. He got up at 5:00AM from about ages 5-13. Even now he's a morning person. When he was younger, he'd march into my mom's room on occasion announcing that he was "ready for his egg breakfast". He also was not the type of kid who would sit quietly and play in the morning. Nick's idea of a good morning project would be disecting the inerds of the telephone or dismantling Alicia's bassinet. On the flip side of things, he did crash early at night. Happy hunting for those precious winks of sleep! ~Andrea, MA

Anonymous said...

Hi first time writer, but long time reader. I had the same problem with my two children when they were 4 and 6. What worked for me was putting a little whisky in there milk before bed. Now the kids sleep all through the morning . . . and afternoon. Give it a shot. Good Luck.