I am mostly a lark. I can occasionally be a night owl, but I don't like having to be super quiet, and sometimes being up late at night is just creepy. I prefer the early morning. You still have to be quiet, but it just feels different. It is just you and the birds... This was the time when I did most of my writing in college. NO - not because my paper was due in just a few hours, it was because my head was clear, I was (relatively) rested and I knew I wouldn't be bothered.
I have enjoyed being the only lark in this family for a few years now. Other than the several months it took to get a newborn to sleep through the night, I have enjoyed reigning supreme in the early morning hours. Until now. Now I have company. You see, Colin is a lark as well. It's not that I don't enjoy his sweet presence, it is just that I no longer have the freedom to do as I please.... This was my reading or writing time - it was sacred! It still is, it is just now broken into five minute segments... I get up to grab more Cheerios, warm a bottle, change a diaper, get some toys, fish him out of the dog food bowl, clean up the now-dumped out dog water bowl, find a binkie, wipe up the spit up and of course hold him. And hold him. And hold him. And try to type with one hand. I put him down, only to pop up a minute later because he has toddled off and I can't hear him anymore... This explains why my writing of late is so terribly fragmented and hard to follow. I can never a carry a train of thought to it's natural conclusion. I've been surviving the last year writing Facebook statuses!
Colin wakes up around 5:30 every morning. It makes no difference what time he went to bed, that is when he wakes up. Some mornings he just might actually fall back asleep - IF he has been able to locate his binkie. Otherwise he gets progressively more agitated. In the meantime, Dean and I are semi-asleep, taking turns whacking each other in the backside, in the hopes that the other will get up and take care of Colin. Now, I did say I was a lark - but it is with limitations... I prefer 6-6:30... There is just something about 5:30. I can't seem to get up with any sort of can-do attitude; there is serious trudging involved. Thank goodness that Rylan is Colin's roommate. We did that on purpose because that little girl could sleep through a freight train.
Our morning routine used to be seriously messed up around here. Colin just turned 13 months. Up until about 2 months ago, I was averaging 5 hours of sleep a night. There was no lark to be found. If, by the off-chance I could stumble back to bed, I would. And sleep until 8 or so (the kids were asleep anyway). That meant we started school work around 10- 10:30... which meant that we got almost absolutely nothing done. We would have to leave the house at 12:30 for karate or gymnastics, not return until 2:30-3, and then it was afternoon nap routine. If we got back to school at all, it was a small window between 4 -5. As you can imagine, my frustration at the situation was enormous. We were not getting anywhere! A vicious cycle had been established and it was going to take something drastic to break it.
Enter in the Subaru fiasco. I may not believe in God's will, but I do believe that things happen for a reason - a way for the Universe to re-establish order and balance. Three weeks ago, during a Sunday ski trip to Copper Mtn. (Dean and Jordan), the head gasket blew. There was no saving the Subaru. She had to be towed home (thank goodness for AAA), and was pronounced by our trusted mechanic. The Subaru was my car from before we got married, and had become Dean's car to commute back and forth to work. He has a 70 mile (round trip) commute every day. We cannot replace the car immediately, so we had to explore other options. The best that we found was that Dean join a commuter pool. He found VanGo - a commuter van that takes a specific group of riders from our town to where he works - all of the riders work within the same 5 mile radius. We have used this service for two weeks now. It costs $153 a month - less than the monthly gas budget for the Subaru alone!
Dean has to be at the designated rendezvous point by 7 am. This presents some interesting challenges. Dean is not a lark. He typically rolls out of here by 8:30 or so - late to work and leaves late to get home (to put in a full day), so dinner wasn't until 8-8:30. Our vicious cycle of go to bed late, get up late (except for me) has dominated our lives for quite some time. Last summer we had a different schedule going though... Dean started cycling in earnest. There was a new bus service that began last June, that runs from here to Boulder and beyond. Dean began a routine of getting up and leaving the house by 5:30 to ride to the bus stop, get on the bus, get off the bus about 5 miles from work and ride in. On the other days, Dean would drive and ride a much longer ride during lunch. A couple of times he even rode to work (32 miles) and then took the bus home. Long story short - we know he CAN get up early and get to work early because it has been done before. We have made this current transition quite seamlessly. We leave the house at 6:50am. If there are any kids up, they go with. If they are asleep, we wake up Jordan and give him the baby monitor and house phone to keep by him on the bed. And then we go. My round trip takes 16-18 minutes. I am a firm believer in Free Range kids, so I am all about empowering Jordan to be in charge of sleeping children while I am gone. :) Two weeks into this routine it has been great!! I get home at 7:08 am and get the kids up immediately and start showers, diaper changes and so forth. By 8 am we are ready to start school work - which has made a HUGE difference for us.
Best of all - since the change in daily schedule, my 'lark' has returned and the little lark keeps Dean and I company in the morning. A few mornings though, he has managed to go back to sleep. I am still having to hunt for some quiet reading/writing time. I take it when the opportunity presents itself. As soon as I am regularly logging in 7-8 hours of sleep a night and make up for my 2 year-long run of sleep deprivation, I am going to push my wake-up time back to 5 am (which for whatever crazy reason is easier than 5:30) to carve out some 'me' time.
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