5:00 a.m. is Awfully Early

And if I can't get Peter to sleep later, that's what time he'll be waking when the clocks change on November 2. Two days before my due date.

Since putting him to bed later has always proved fruitless, and putting him to bed earlier a la Weissbluth fails us too, my magical solution was to re-train him on the alarm clock. Rather than waking himself up, the alarm would wake him up. I started at 5:55, then added a couple of minutes every day. I even sweetened the deal by telling him that he would get a prize for staying in bed until the alarm goes off (each day he gets a car or truck cut from a fleece scrap).

This worked great for over a week. I considered myself a genius. We made it to 6:15.

But for the past three days, he's regressed. I hear him wake at 6:00 and sing to himself until the alarm goes off fifteen minutes later. Impressed as I am with his ability to wait things out in his bed, that is not the goal. And I'm all out of ideas.

So we may just be waking early this winter, as we did last winter. It may even be for the best. As it is, with Peter waking at 6:00, we have just enough time to accomplish all we need to do-- and at a leisurely pace-- before leaving for school. But once the new baby is here, I'm going to have one more mouth to feed, one more bottom to dress, one more person whose needs I cannot fully fathom now. The extra hour may serve us well.