My Plan is Backfiring

The past month or so, my goal had been to get up earlier in the morning.  The days seem to pass by so fast and I feel like I can never get enough done in a day, so I thought I needed to get up earlier so I can accomplish more.   I've never been a morning person.  As a nurse I mainly worked second shift, staying up late and sleeping in.  Since I've been a stay at home mom, I've slowly felt a shift and mornings aren't as painful as they used to be.   My usual waking time is right around 7am, sometimes a little earlier, sometimes a little later and I go to bed right around 10pm. 

My quite time has always been after the kids go to bed.  I love this time!  It's when no one is  talking to me constantly, or demanding things from me, no one to follow me every single moment of the day.  It's when I can have a full thought without being interrupted!  This is when  I usually work on my artwork.  Many times though I find that I'm so darn tired at the end of the day that I either have to force myself  to paint or I just can't do it at all.

For this reason I decided I need to start getting up earlier.  I wanted some nice quiet time in the morning.  Relax a bit before the morning rush starts.  The first week of doing this was kind of hard, it didn't feel quite right.  I really dislike an alarm, so before going to bed I would have to tell myself I was going to wake up early and guess what?  It started to happen.  Now I've been waking up between 5 and 6 am, usually around 5:30.  There have been a few days where I "slept in" until 6:30!  To be honest, it has been wonderful.  I can accomplish so much in that quiet little space of time.  I usually start with my morning coffee, check e-mails and blogs and then start working on things that I normally don't have time for during the day.   If I have a painting in progress, I'll work on that.  Sometimes I just feel like reading, while other days I've cleaned out cabinets and bins, baked muffins or bread, sewn patches on pants or like yesterday I sewed this mama mouse and baby! (Amelia played with these little guys for hours!)   For me it feels like my time, extra time to do what I want. 



Unfortunately as my waking time has slowly shifted to an earlier time, so has our little light sleeping 4 year old, Amelia!  Argh!  I tiptoe down the stairs in the morning, but somehow her little ears and body sense that I'm up and usually within minutes she is also up.   She has always been our early riser, but usually 6:30-7am.  This past week I don't think she's slept past 6am.



My plan has backfired.  I'm not getting my morning peace now, my alone time and she is also getting an hour and a half to 2 hours less sleep!  I'm not sure what to do about it.  Today I stayed in bed a little longer so she could sleep.  I got up at 5:45 and within minutes she was up.  I guess I'll just have to go with it and enjoy it.  Amelia is a morning person and she almost always wakes up with a smile on her face and she also plays by herself very well, but I'm definitely missing my morning peace and quiet though.    She is busy talking to me right now as I'm trying to finish up this blog post!

I was hoping to quickly write this blog post this morning and work on this painting pictured below, but things have went slower this morning with her little voice chattering in my ear for the past hour!  Oh well, what can I do?  I'm definitely not going to try to get up even earlier!