Project Early Bird

After returning from my  trip to Arizona and giving myself a few days to adjust to the normal routine, I launched an experiment which I have now dubbed "Project Early Bird."

I started getting up at 5:30 in the morning.

Are you sure about this?

That is a big deal for me. Really big. I like to sleep in. For most of our marriage, Damon has risen earlier than me, getting up and having breakfast with the kids and sometimes only waking me up when it was absolutely necessary for me to take over while he got in the shower.

Still, I had this big idea to start getting up early enough that I could exercise and shower before the kids needed me. I had several motivators for embarking on such an ambitious new schedule. I'm more productive once I'm showered and dressed. Holly is at an age where she can get into mischief and danger if left unsupervised for too long, so I can really only shower when she's napping or someone older (other than Gunnar) is here to keep an eye on her.  Over the last several months she has dropped a nap, and now her only nap of the day is a little later in the morning. If I wait for her to go to sleep, I'm not able to shower until after 11:00, and so I just tend to waste the whole morning kind of puttering around waiting for her to nap. I figured that if I could be showered and dressed before the girls leave for school, that would help me start my day better.

Also, I tend to stay up too late, and wondered if getting up earlier would leave me tired out and inclined to go to bed earlier.  One of the reasons I believe that I stay up late is because I need some time to wind down and do my own thing after the kids are in bed. I thought that, maybe, by getting up earlier, I could "fill my cup" before the kids were awake rather than recharging at the end of the day. I was skeptical about this potential benefit of my early rising, but willing to try it out.

So, is it worth it?
Turns out, I'm not getting to bed any earlier most nights. Instead, I'm just getting less sleep. I don't actually notice it too much, except at about 5:30 and 1 second when I've realized that the alarm is going off and I wonder if I'm crazy and can really drag myself out of bed.  Honestly, some days I do bail and get back in bed. And, some nights I know that I just can't get up at 5:30 the next morning. (I also manage to sneak in a few afternoon catnaps throughout the week, which helps.)

However, I have learned that I really like being showered and dressed before the girls leave for school. Often I still tend to lounge about and waste some time on the Internet after they leave, but once I come to myself and decide I ought to get on with the housework or some other project. . . I'm already dressed! So, on the mornings when I decide I need to sleep in a little and don't get up at 5:30, I get up at 6:30 instead (still early for me) and hop right in the shower.

I'm also getting more exercise. Although I have to have the TV turned way down low and all the lights off (so that when Holly wakes up at about 6:00 she'll go in our bedroom and fall asleep with Damon instead of coming out to the family room with me), it's so much easier to exercise without kids climbing on me, asking for a drink of water, or needing a diaper change in the middle of the workout. I've even spent some of my early-morning hours going for solo walks or working on a landscaping project in the part of our yard that's right by the street--both things that I can't really do when I'm home alone with the kids.

So, I'd consider my Project a success.  Dare I go so far as to call it a new lifestyle? Maybe.  Ask me in a few more months.

P.S. I do plan to continue it during the summer, but I might allow myself a 30-minute delay since there won't be the pressure of having kids dressed and fed and lunches made by the time Damon leaves for work.