Clock

Rylan is our early bird.  We've been struggling with sleeping to a reasonable time for awhile now.  For the longest time he was up before 5 am and calling for me to get him, ready to start his day.  There is something about 4:xx am that just feels too early.

So a few months ago we bought Rylan a clock.

During the night it glows a light yellow color (like a dim night light).  Then at a set time, it glows green, meaning it's time to get up.

When we first got the clock, we didn't set it for anything too ambitious - 5:15 am, I think.  Rylan never gets out of his bed (always waits until I come get him) and when the clock is green, he was allowed to call for me.  Then we slowly moved it back 10 minutes or so at a time.  I believe it was approaching 6 am when daylights savings time ended and Rylan was back to waking up at just before 5 am.  We worked our way back to a later time again and finally got to 5:45 am.  I'm okay with this time because I can still work out in the morning before taking the boys to school or a playdate and not feel rushed to get us out the door.

Rylan was doing okay with this, but then cold season hit (lots of waking up from coughing fits, etc), and we've been all messed up.  And Rylan started leaking in his diapers more and waking up from that.  So for almost two months, I've been going into his room when he calls me sometime between 1 and 4 am and just sleeping on his floor.  Sometimes Rylan will join me on the floor and other times he'll stay in his bed.  He doesn't usually sleep much though during this time.  He's always wide awake by 5 am but we aren't allowed to leave his room until the clock is green (which kills me because if I'm going to be awake, I'd rather be getting something done!).

This routine is not working for me.  So I've started our first reward chart.  I try not to bribe Rylan much (bribing him has completely backfired on me and I'll explain that in a separate post later) so this is something new for us.

Rylan gets a sticker for every night he doesn't call me until his clock turns green at 5:45 am.  Since we've finally discovered the joy of Chuck E. Cheese's, I told Rylan that once he gets 10 stickers, we get to go there (not sure how many tokens he'll be getting yet - 10 or 20 probably).

I took this picture a couple of days ago - Rylan has 5 stickers so far.  We only had one night that I went to Rylan's room at 3 am.  Rylan is still usually up by 5 am and talking in his room, but he doesn't call me.  My body is so used to being up by then too that I've been awake listening to him and trying so hard to doze back off to sleep.  But hopefully we are making progress and can both start getting more sleep now!