Here's Hoping ...

It doesn't seem like it should be time for this already, but it will be here this weekend. Daylight Savings Time. The dreaded spring forward when you 'lose' an hour ... But, we are actually looking forward to it in our house.

It seems that Tyler was a farmer in a past life...he's got to be up with the sun. His internal clock is set for 6:30 am. Everyday, 6:30 in the morning. This is usually how it goes ... we hear a creak, then stomp, stomp, stomp, stomp, stomp (Tyler is so heavy footed ... it's like big foot is coming down the hall) as he runs down the hall. Then, another creak (as our door opens), then a grunt (usually from Galyn) as Tyler climbs up with boundless energy and lands on Daddy. (I'm glad that Galyn has the side closest to the door.) He then thrashes around the bed in some type of whirlwind, wrestling fashion proclaiming that he is "Soooo, hungry". Us, obviously not quite as rearing to go as he is, try to put everything off a while longer ... bribing him to be still, by putting on a show. We don't even have to look to find something that's on ... we have it all memorized. Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, 6:30, channel 126, which is followed by Little Einsteins. Two great shows that help us get a little more sleep. I guess we're pretty predictable ... Tyler now usually stops off at the pantry to get a granola bar or breakfast bar prior to coming into our room.

What's crazy is, it doesn't matter what time he goes to bed, whether he's had a nap or not, he is up at 6:30 ... 6:30! And when he's up, he's up ... there's no sitting still, or laying still as the case may be. We're pretty sure if he would just allow himself to lay in his bed, without popping up the second he realizes it's probably morning, he might fall back asleep. But for some reason it's like he thinks he's missing something.

We've tried just about everything to keep him in bed just a little longer. We've put him back in bed, telling him it's still night time. We've taken him to the window and showed him that the sun is still asleep. These both resulted in about 10 more minutes of sleep. We've tried hanging blankets over the window blinds to make the room darker. This didn't work either. We have now started a bear cave. Tyler has the bed rails on either side of his bed. We take a sheet and put it over the rails and then tucked it under the mattress. While it looks really cool, it hasn't made much of a difference. Except now Tyler always requests to have a bear cave. Look what we've started.

Oh, and I can't forget to mention the funny things he says. Tyler says (pretty regularly) "I can't sleep when it's dright (aka: bright) outside." That's when we've taken him to the window and explain that he's mistaken... it is in fact dark outside. This also is a favorite nap time saying. The other morning he came in as chipper as could be ...
Tyler: "Guess who's up?"
Us: "Who?"
Tyler: "The sun."
We started laughing... we were expecting him to say Ryan was awake. (He normally keeps us very informed of Ryan's activities ... he'll let us know if Ryan is hungry, tired, crying, awake, asleep ...)

Anyway, we are hoping the time change will help us. He should now wake up at 7:30 am. We won't adjust his schedule for the time change ... just ours. It will definitely be nice to see 7:30 on the clock instead of 6:30.