Do We Have a Winner?

Yesterday was a pretty miserable day at our place. Steve and I moved the boys into separate bedrooms and the physical-ness of moving heavy pieces of furniture left my back close to spasm. It’s not a lot of fun when it spasms. However, Steve was even more miserable because he was NOT into the idea at all, but I wouldn’t let it go and in the end, he gave up the fight. His “office” is now in an alcove off the living room, and as he works from home when he’s not travelling, he ain’t a happy camper.

Jax finally carked it yesterday after a couple of weeks of 5am starts...

BUT something had to change. We were all miserable. For months and months now, the boys have been waking up around 5-6am every day, causing havoc in the home (especially with the cats) while it's still pitch black outside. Every morning we’d wake up frustrated, angry, and pretty unhappy, because not only was it too early for us, we knew exactly what each day would bring - two miserable, emotional boys who hadn’t had enough bloody sleep.

When you look at your child’s face and all you see are HUGE black rings under their eyes, it doesn’t feel good. When you’re exhausted from working long hours and then have to deal with tired, emotional boys, it is not easy to count to three or find the love and patience required to get through a day. When you wake up and find your kids gone, hunting around the condo for the cats or climbing to the highest point they can find (unsupervised), that’s not a great start to the day either. When you wake up and smell burning (see previous blog), see the detritus of a fridge raid, or whatever other little surprise they left for us, it’s just not the way to start a contented day.

So when nothing is working change everything right?

Well that was my idea, because the bottom line is, we all need to get more sleep. We’re all worn out and wrung out. We’ve all had enough and it’s not working for any of us.

We just can’t be cool, calm and collected parents when we ain't rested.

If I think back to the last 12 months, there’s been too much emotional tension in the house. Naturally, all blame cannot be placed at the feet of our children. They’re just being kids and they’ll get through it - resist persist. However for us to thrive in the midst of family and work life, we need to get enough sleep. We also need to feel relaxed and at ease when we go to bed. That’s been missing. We need to get it back.

Steve woke up with the kids this morning. The first report in indicates Lex went into Jax’s room just before 7am and played the drums until he woke up. A success? Well it wasn’t between 5-6am - so a tick. He did, however, go into Jax’s room on the threat of death, so that also means a cross. It’ll take time for them to adjust and get used to not being with each other all the time I suppose. I just hope this works, otherwise I’ll have an extremely grumpy husband, resenting me for losing his office.

Perhaps ‘staying in the room reward charts’ are the way to go? Any suggestions?

Yours, without the bollocks

Andrea