toddler

For several months now, my son has been waking up before the crack of dawn. I’m talking 5 a.m., maybe as late as 5:45 on a good day. He’s otherwise a great sleeper, napping about 2 hours a day at a consistent time and going to bed at night around 7 p.m. with very little fuss.  A few months ago we tried shifting his bedtime later with no luck. He still woke up at the same time, but our lovely quiet evenings just got started later. We gave up, deciding to go back to the 7 p.m. bedtime, and be grateful for our evening alone time, the one upside of those inhumane early mornings.

Then came daylight savings time and we decided to try again. We thought we’d keep him on standard time and he’d start waking up at 6 a.m. and going to sleep at 8 p.m.. So come 6 p.m. each day, when previously I would have been getting him ready for bed, I now have another hour or so to kill. Since it’s staying light outside later, we’ve started a new evening routine of hanging out on the front stoop together, saying hello to neighbors and passers-by and waiting for Daddy to come home.  I tell him to say hello to the nice ladies or to the jogger running by, and he replies, “hi nice ladies!” and “hi running man!” I love the reaction on people’s faces when greeted in such a manner by a not-quite-two-year old. And nothing beats his reaction when he sees his daddy rounding the corner on his bike, arriving home from work.

While I’m really enjoying the temperate evenings before the humidity and mosquitos of summer arrive, I’m sad to report that our ploy has failed. Somehow my son’s body clock figured out we were trying to trick it, and with the exception of one or two lucky days, he’s continued waking up well before 6. We’re giving it till Wednesday and if we still haven’t been able to shift him to a later schedule, it’ll be back to the earlier bedtime once again and no more evenings on the front stoop.

p.s. – for anyone who cares, yes, that is a DC United jersey.

p.p.s. – for anyone who cares about the technical stuff, these photos were taken with my new Canon 5D MkII and a rented 24mm f1.4. It is a super sweet camera! The lens is so freakin’ expensive that it’s actually cheaper for me to rent it to use for every session for the next year than to buy it. Sigh.