Parenting Thursdsay: Morning Makeover

My goal for the month of September is to get my mornings organized, they are a complete disaster.  When I say disaster I mean disaster.  Children running wild, wrestling four year olds to get them dressed, negotiating deals to eat breakfast,  crying, whining babies hanging from your legs as you struggle to even get dressed.  

Yes for the most part that is my morning.  It is not uncommon for Sean to arrive home to pick us up and I am running around half dressed, scrambling to get bottles made, food for lunches and pleading with Cyrus to please for the last time to find his shoes.
Wow, does it really have to be this hard?

No, but in order to whip my mornings into shape I do have to give up a little of something that I hold dear; sleep.  In my world sleep is  hard to come by, and in the past year I have learned to adapt grabbing a few extra moments of rest whenever I can.  

Sage at one year old still does not sleep through the night. In return this means I have not slept for more than four hours straight in over a year.  Now I average around 5-7 hours of interrupted sleep every night. And although he still gets up 2-3 times a night he usually is pretty easy to get back down with a bottle.  A lot better than 6 months ago when I’d sleep for two hours, be up for two hours over and over again until about 6 a.m. when he’d finally crash and then it was too late for me to go back to bed. 

I haven’t set an alarm clock in over a year thanks to my little night owl/ morning rooster. But I’m to a point that I will give up an hour of my precious sleep to settle the tides of my hectic morning. Keeping myself on a schedule, getting up by 6 a.m. every morning, I can get myself together before I have to get Cyrus up and even some mornings before Sage wakes.  

And once I’m awake, with coffee in hand I actually love the quite and stillness of the morning. Stealing a few minutes for yourself at the start of the day can be a golden opportunity.

If I can get myself in order next in line is Cyrus.  We are really trying to keep him on a schedule and trying to use his bedtime and morning charts.  They are a great reminder and instant reward for him to complete his morning tasks, getting dressed, making his bed, breakfast, cleaning up, teeth and shoes. Once he’s completed a task listed he can draw a smiley face next to the picture/ word with a dry ease marker.

 

I made one more addition to his charts this week in hopes of helping him get in a better breakfast routine.  His morning menu lists different choices he has for breakfast, cereal, waffles, eggs ect. and a beverage.  

Cy got a real kick out of this. A couple weeks ago playing with his cousins they all were making and handing out menus to all the adults, which gave me the idea for Cy’s morning menu.  We play or joke around about being a restaurant quite often if we’re at the bakery or even home so this gives Cy a chance to play it up even more. 

So Hello September, Hello a little organization and sanity.... goodbye carefree summer and disaster mornings.  We'll see how this goes.