22 February 2012

Six oh oh!





"Wook, Mommy!  I'm wearing my pants on my ARMS!"

DaddyBoy and I both work better early than late, so we go to bed at a decent hour and get up at a not-so-decent hour to work before it's time to start our days (4 am today).  Noble has been an early riser from day one.  We used to think it was because his crib was in our room, and that moving him into Kayci's room would help him sleep longer.  Um, no--that was 3 years ago, and he would still get up at 5 or 5:30 if we'd let him.  

Well, as much as it hurts my heart that he's growing so fast, one of the many benefits is how smart he is.  Once he got his new bed, we started working on a reward system to keep him IN HIS bed all night and to keep us IN OUR bed all night.  We had to amend it to staying in his bed until one of us was awake, because he tended to wake up at the first sound from our room.  The problem with this, beyond the obvious of Noble not getting enough rest, was that we weren't getting our work done in the mornings...which made for very long days.  

So, we came up with a plan:  Noble loves to tell time.  (For the longest time he'd walk around saying, "6:42, wake up time!"  We wish!)  We let him pick out his own digital clock and set it up by his bed.  His rule is:  if he gets out of bed before 6:00 AM, he doesn't get his sticker for staying in his bed all night.  By golly, it works!  Or, it has worked for the past 3 weeks or so since we started it.

But...this morning I was up grading and DaddyBoy was in the office working, and I kept hearing something.  It turns out, Noble woke up a little early today--but stayed in their room for fear of missing out on a sticker.  Kayci ratted him out when they came in at 6:00 (it's 6:00 on the DOT every day, and every day he says, "Guess what time it is on my clock, Mommy?  Six oh oh!  Wake up time!").  I asked when they woke up and Noble said, of course, "Six oh oh!"  Kayci said, "Actually...he's been up since 5:28.  He tried to get me to change his clock to 6:00 so we could come out earlier."  I told you he was smart!  In his defense, we did see a similar trick on "Mr. Bean" yesterday evening.  

Now, if only we could get Noble to use his brain power for good instead of evil...

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