When I was young, I remember sleeping in on weekends. Sleeping in to me meant practically until noon. I loved to sleep. I know it annoyed my parents to no end. I knew because they commented on it quite frequently. It didn't matter if I stayed up late, which I can't really remember being allowed to do very often, or if I went to bed early. I still slept as long as I possibly could in the morning.
Then I grew up and went to college where late nights were pretty much the norm. For the most part, I always made my class schedules sleep-in friendly. I would start making my schedule at the beginning of every semester in the same manner, by crossing out 8:00 am on the scheduling paper and working from there. Getting a good education was a priority in college, but that didn't mean I had to give up sleep to do it. I mean, isn't the world just so much better when you have woken up naturally, without the annoying sound of an alarm clock buzzing in your ear?
I do have a theory that the whole sleep thing may be related to the time of day you were born. I was born at 1 am. Somehow it must set some internal clock and that determines if you are a day person or a night person. I am a night person. T on the other hand was born later in the afternoon. Some how that must relate to waking up early. He loves mornings like my old drill sergeant loved training in the rain. "Ain't nothing but refreshing liquid sunshine." he would say. T wakes up in the morning and from the comfort of my cozy bed I am awoken by the thunderous sound of three year old feet running at full speed across the kitchen floor towards our bedroom door. Who runs full speed so early in the morning? And by early I mean anywhere from 4:45am to, if I am really lucky, he may sleep as late as 6:00am. In my parents world that would be just in time to make it to a late breakfast. I just see it as "time before the sun comes up". In my perfect world no one would be up that early except bakers and coffee makers.
The only explanation for this is that either my parents had someone put a curse on me to amuse themselves, or else God has a wacky sense of humor. And in either case, I am looking for the place to file a formal protest. Seriously, genetically speaking if my wife likes to sleep, and I like to sleep we should produce an offspring that likes to sleep. But no, we made a child that will only take a nap if I trick him by having him sit on the couch with me and watch something so boring on TV that the force of gravity will eventually win and his eyes will close long enough for sleep to take over. Unfortunately it works on me as well, and I fall asleep. That takes away the little extra bonus that parents get from nap time, free time to be able to get something done. (Not that I have a lot to do.)
Typically, what we end up with is a little boy that gets overly tired by bed time and that makes him emotional and difficult to get to sleep. He then fights every attempt to get him ready for bed, and we end up going to bed later than expected. Which at one time I secretly thought was a great idea; he would be really tired and sleep later. My hopes were crushed when after staying up several hours later than his usual bedtime the night before, he still came running across the kitchen floor just as early the next morning. Oh well, I assume one day it will end and I will be dragging his sleeping body out of bed in a desperate attempt to get food in him and get him to school on time. I wonder if then I will be complaining about that? At least I will be better rested and hopefully able to state my case more clearly and concisely.
No comments:
Post a Comment