4am and the world sleeps

The kids are regularly waking up between 4am and 4:15 at the moment. Yawn.

We've never really had sleep issues, unless you count the fact that neither of them slept through the night before 14 months or so. But my philosophy has always been to make sleep a pleasant experience for them, and it worked out really well - going to bed is never a struggle. It's just the early waking!

Since I'm such an optimist though, I'll share with you what I've found at 4am: There is a certain peace to the world at that time of the morning. The kids are generally cuddly and loving (the super-energetic playtime usually only starts about an hour after getting up), and there is something lovely about how quiet everything is. Having a cup of coffee while the world sleeps, with time to just slooooowly appreciate the start of a new day is actually a blessing. Waking up at 5am means I generally have 15 minutes or so to wake up and then the day starts. We leave home around 6:20. So that extra hour with the kids, while the sleep would have been wonderful, is actually not the worst thing that could happen to me.

We're going to try a few methods to let them sleep a little later over the next few weeks. Most importantly we'll try to move Heike's morning sleep later so that she can go down a bit later with hopefully a later waketime. We'll see - and maybe if it works I'll even miss getting up so early.