Lesson #12: Sometimes Daddy Really Does Know Best

Lesson #12: Sometimes Daddy Really Does Know Best

My kid has an internal clock like no other, and it's set to "butt crack of dawn". It doesn't matter if he goes to bed at 7:30 or 9:30, he will wake up early. One night he was still up at 11:00 (that was a barrel of laughs) and he still got up with the sun.

I put an alarm clock in his room with the number 7 taped above the first digit. The deal is that he's supposed to wait until the first number on the clock is a 7 before he wakes up mommy and daddy. This works slightly more than half the time. We know he's up because we hear a door slam, then little feet scampering across the hall, then our door slams. I have to give him credit though, he won't technically wake us up, he'll just play cars on our heads for awhile, then grab my cell phone and exclaim, "Mama look! It's a 7!!!!" Then I look and it says 6:07 or something. One morning he gave us a nice little drumming concert at 6am. Who wouldn't want to wake up to the soothing sounds of a 3 year old banging away on an empty popcorn tin while shouting "Drum drum drum" at the top of his lungs?

So when I called my husband at 8:45 yesterday morning and he told me that both boys were still sleeping, my first reaction was to ask, "Are they ok? Have you checked on them?" I was even more shocked when I later found out that he had to actually wake them up at 9:00 to get them ready to go.

This morning, it wasn't drumming that woke me up at 5:28am (to be exact), but a seriously rad thunderstorm. I thought for sure big man would come pounding across the hallway at any moment, having been awakened by the storm. Much to my delight, I was the only member of the household that mother nature woke up today.     When I re-awoke to the sounds of the baby working his way from an "I'm getting annoyed" fuss to a full on "GET YOUR A$$ OUT OF BED" scream, I was amazed to see 7:34 on the clock. I was even more freaked out when hubby and I took the baby downstairs and big man was still snoozing away in his room.

This little taste of freedom has got me thinking. Once is a fluke, but twice might mean we're onto something. I mentioned this to hubby and that's when the other shoe dropped. "I have to admit... I set the time on his alarm clock an hour behind after the power went out the other day. Maybe he was just waiting for the 7," he said.

At first I was peeved at him for taking advantage of our kid's lack of time telling skills and using it for his own selfish gain, but I have to admit the extra hour of snooze time sure was nice. Maybe we can file it under self preservation and call it good.