my kid wakes up at 5am | Mommy Adventures

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Daylight savings (is my nemesis)

I’ve been really tired recently. Partly because of the intensive three day chemistry workshop I had to go to since I take introductory chemistry externally. We external students still have to do lab work, so the best way for us to do so is to cram all 6 labs that the internal students take over an entire semester into just 3 days over the mid semester break.

Each morning, was spent getting myself and the kids ready, eating breakfast, and then making lunches. I dropped them off at a friend’s house for the day and then I was at uni all day. When I got home, I made a quick dinner, washed the dishes, and then spent the rest of the evening preparing my lab book for the next days experiments before going to bed. Preparing the lab book was really time consuming since we needed to make all sorts of tables with rulers, write experiment aims, etc.

The main reason for the tiredness though, is daylight savings time. Whomever thought it was a good idea to turn the clocks back in autumn clearly didn’t have small children. According to Wikipedia, one of the original purposes of daylight savings time was to reduce the use of incandescent lighting. The U.S. has only had daylight savings time since the 1970s due to the energy crisis. In Australia, only New South Wales, the ACT, Victoria, and Tasmania use daylight savings time. The other states do not.

The first day of daylight savings was rather unfortunate. Both kids had been sick, one with croup, the other with bronchitis. Despite going to bed late, one of them woke up coughing at 4am, which of course woke the other one, followed by Aaron and me. The second day was pretty much the same.

The next couple of days they slept until 6 (their usual wake up time), probably because they were so tired from all their 4am starts. I was so excited at the prospect of them sleeping until 6am again, adjusting to daylight savings time.

Except they didn’t. It’s been what, 2 weeks now since daylight savings started? Something like that. Every morning they wake up at 5. FIVE a.m. Their body clocks are so tuned to what used to be 6am that no matter what time they go to bed, that is when they wake up. Except that now 6am is 5am.

“Mommy, I want my light on.” I heard Daniel yell this morning at 5.

I ignored him. He’s been yelling different things at 5 for about a week. One morning he wanted a bandaid on his foot. Another he wanted to go sit on Grandma’s bed (Grandma’s bed isn’t even in this house). Sometimes he wants to get out of his room. It’s always something though.

He kept yelling “Mommy, I want my light on!”

We kept ignoring it, hoping he’d give up and lay back down and go to sleep. Plus we didn’t want to give in to demands from a 2 year old at 5am every morning. You know what happens, you give in once and then it becomes the new normal.

The cheeky 5am waker (he gets contact dermatitis from slobber and food, which is why he has a rash around his mouth)

A couple minutes later, all was quiet. I closed my eyes and tried to go back to sleep.

Click. We heard the distinct noise of a light being switched on and saw a faint glow of yellow through our open bedroom door.

Little footsteps came closer and closer to our room then suddenly stopped.

Click. Daniel giggled after he turned our light on and then climbed into our bed, clearly very proud of himself, and jumped on Aaron as soon as he got up.

Daylight savings – I hate you. Actually it was the end of daylight savings time, but whatever, it still sucks.

P.S. Click here to check out this interview I did on Media Shower.

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