The Quest for Rest

A unique challenge to having many children in varying age groups is that once the little ones are in bed for the night, the older kids come wide awake.  But at the crack of dawn the little ones are up and ready to play. Oh the agony. When I had just one or two children, or even three, getting up in the morning bright and cheery was no problem. But for the last year, I’ve been dragging. Rebecca (2) was moved to her big girl bed when we potty trained her. From that point on, she has been getting out of bed at odd times. Times like 4:00 AM. Or 6:00 AM.  I admit, I struggled. I had to fake like I was not completely exhausted and falling apart for lack of sleep. It was not her fault she really did not know what time it was- she was up, and so she was ready to go. She even joyfully woke her older five-year-old brother (with whom she shares a room). So morning after morning we had a two-year-old and five-year-old in our room, WIDE AWAKE, at unreasonable hours.

For. The Love.

I just need sleep. ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

And I need to wake up before ALL THE LITTLE PEOPLE IN THE UNIVERSE the children came in asking for breakfast.

So last month, I wrote in my calendar, under priorities: SLEEP

And I set about figuring out what to do. I started by making 1,000,000 several muffins so that when they woke me, apparently STARVING, I would be able to hand them a muffin, even with blurry eyes and stumbling in the dark.

Next, I purchased what has been my BEST PURCHASE EVER IN THE HISTORY OF AMAZON!!! saving grace.

A clock. A magical, beautiful, amazing, glorious phenominal, useful clock for those too little to tell time, and too little to read a clock. What makes this clock special is that it has this amazing feature. It glows. And when they should be safely in their little beds, it glows a nice, soft, warm yellow. And then, at 7:15 each day, a miracle occurs, it glows green. On the screen it has the time and the words OK to Wake!

And the children come tumbling happily out of their room joyfully saying: “It’s green! It’s green!”

And instead of meeting a blurry eyed, half asleep, drooling mama, they find a peacefully showered, dressed, prayed up, time-in-the-word- mama. Because unbeknownst to them, my own alarm clock goes off at least 20 minutes before theirs.  And I am so happy to greet those little faces once I am dressed and ready for the day.

Now,  I’ll admit, it took a good four days for them to really understand the whole clock thing. And I had to give them the freedom to use the restroom that adjoins their room so that the new clock would not cause an accident.  Fortunately their older sister has a bedroom adjoining that bathroom as well, so if any hoopla was happening she would intervene. That angel.

Now, at the other end of the rest cycle, I have been trying to think through when I need to go to bed in order to get a healthy amount of sleep, and for most nights, I am actually hitting my goal. In fact, most days I am waking an hour or more before my alarm even goes off, enabling me to get some other goals accomplished before the children are ready for action.