Early Risers

I am a morning person.  I can't help it.  Even on days when I have no reason to get up and no children in my house I am up by 7:00am.  I am not, however, ready to socialize right when I get up and certainly not before 6:00am.  It's like a magical time for me at which point I become capable of communicating.  Talk to me before that and I might bite your head off.  God blessed me with two early risers.  Julia is like her momma.  She might get up early, but she's not really ready to start her day yet.  She just wants to snuggle.  Amelia, my little social butterfly, knows no time at which she is not happily chatting away.  Now my girls go to bed at 8:00pm every night.  So 6:00am is an appropriate wake up time for them at this age (4).  Unfortunately, my little darlings had a hard time figuring this out.  They wanted to get up at 5:00 or 5:30am no matter what time we put them to bed.  We tried using a baby gate to keep them in their room until 6:00, but they just knocked it over and then it scared them and they started bawling.  Then we found my very favorite product ever.

The Teach Me Time Talking Alarm Clock and Nightlight.  This clock is amazing!  You can set it to turn yellow at bedtime then green when it's time to wake up.  It didn't take long for the girls to catch on to this.  In addition, this clock has several other cool features.  You can make it read just digital or just analog or both.  You can push a button and it will tell you what time it is.  There are games in which it will ask you what time the clock says and then you push a button and it tells you the answer.  It even has an alarm for when the kids get bigger and getting up early isn't so much fun anymore.  This clock retails for about $40.  We got ours online from Barnes and Noble, but there are several other online sources as well.