Mornings, How I Loathe Thee

I don't know about you, but I am not a morning person. I would be much happier overall if the hours between 5am and 7am (ok ok, even 8am...) didn't exist - or at least that I was lucky enough to sleep through them, blissfully unaware. My daughter, however, is not very accommodating. She has developed this bad habit of waking when the sun comes up. Example conversation between Lainey and myself:

Lainey: "Mommy! MOOOOOOOMMMY!"
Me: "glurffbp"
Lainey: "Moooooooooooooooooommmy!"
Me: [inaudible grumbling from underneath my pillow] "Go back to sleep Lainey, it's not time to get up yet."
Lainey: "It IS time to get up! It's morning!"
Me: "No, not yet....it's too early."
Lainey: "But mommy, moooooooooooooommy, mooooooooooooommmy, the sun is out!"

Curse you, early sunrise. However, she recently discovered that instead of hollering out to me she could just go ahead and get up and let herself out of her room. Want to know how I found this out? It's ok, I'll tell you anyway...one morning I opened my eyes, disoriented and panicked at the thought of having woken up on my own, with no little person yelling out my name or kneeing me in the crotch. I shot out of bed and checked Lainey's room - empty. This is not good. I then checked the bathroom - empty, with a toilet so clogged with tissue it was about to become a miniature Niagra Falls and a pair of 3-year-old girl sized underwear lying in the middle of the floor. I then ran downstairs to find my child sitting happily on the couch, naked, with the TV on (oh, apparently she learned how to do that, too...), watching Law & Order.

Clearly, we need a better system.

So my great idea was to invest in an alarm clock for her, something I could set to a certain time and that when the alarm went off, that meant she could get up and come out of her room. Genius, right? So one day we trotted off to Target in search of the perfect clock. She was so excited, her very own clock! You would have thought the child was getting a pony (which honestly, I would have considered if it would give me an extra half hour of sleep in the mornings...). We get to the aisle with the clocks and before I could even take a reasonable survey of them she exclaims "THIS ONE! It's perfect!" and was holding up a bright pink (of course) Hello Kitty clock that was twice as expensive (of course) as all of the other ones. She loved that clock so much, and I did promise it to her, so I gave in. She was on cloud nine, hugging the clock all the way to the register...to the car...she even asked if it could sit with her while she ate lunch. I started to think that this idea might really work after all!

Naturally, we did a practice run and set the alarm to go off to make sure it was working - and suffice to say that I believe that clock would have woken up the Pope all the way over in the Vatican. Then my husband says something that had never occurred to me... "So does that mean if she actually sleeps in, it's going to wake her up anyway?". NO. No No No. That can't happen, what person in their right mind would want to wake a child who is sleeping contentedly? That's like putting your bare arm into a lion's den. This discussion then led to, "If you can hear this thing ringing in outer space, doesn't that mean it's going to wake up Owen too?" This isn't looking good, Kitty. So we did what every good parent would do in this situation - we took the batteries out and explained to her that the clock was broken. And then returned it when she wasn't around.

I suppose now is the time that I should really hunker down and teach my daughter how to read a clock. And if that doesn't work....how to pour a bowl of cereal and turn the TV to Nick Jr.