The best laid plans of MOTHERS often go awry!

So, I'm not entirely certain how our household has adopted this 'schedule' but I can't seem to force us out of it.

You see, when I first became a mother to Danielle some 5ish years ago I knew nothing of baby routines or feeding schedules or sleep training. I knew I had a little baby who needed my love as well as to be fed, burped, changed and bathed. Of course, because I'd not done any homework on motherhood I relied on those in my life to educate me further. At first, I faced a confusing time when she would cluster feed in the evenings, my team of educators advised me of my baby's obvious need for more food than my body could provide and I began feeding my 8 week old infant packaged baby cereal. I've since learned that cluster feeding is a normal activity for infants and is for the purpose of increasing my body's supply of milk! I've gone on to feed both my boys nothing but my milk for the first 6 months of their lives. But now I've gone and turned this into a breastfeeding lesson.

Back to the topic. I was also taught that babies need to sleep on a schedule and so I began waking up my daughter at 8 am and putting her to bed at 8pm. She didn't mind at all. So I put both the boys on this same basic schedule and of course became a lot less rigid with the implimentation of this routine as the years went on. Somehow, without my permission, this schedule has changed. I can't place the exact reason but our children now go to bed around 10pm (lets put a schocked face emoticon here!!! :-0 and then do not rise in the morning until between 9 and 10 am!!!! If you don't quite understand why this is alarming to me, the mother, the keeper of this home, please take note that I am not a night owl. Despite my antics as a teenager and young adult... I much prefer to go to bed early and rise up early. This is the schedule that society functions ideally on, not to mention that all playdates amongst my crowd are scheduled around 10am (meaning that I would have to have all three children fed, dressed and out the door no later than 9:30am to arrive in a timely manner, due to the location of our residence) Plus Sunday school and soccer both begin at 10am, so we're already looking at 2-3 morning out of the week that would require my children and I to be out of bed at an early hour. Yet, there is Thursday evening serive, which facilitates the late to bed, late to rise lifestyle.

The problem I face is, the best way to fix this problem is to wake up 3 small children early in the morning.... which of course means that I would have to be awake and parenting these small children early in the morning. I must say, I have really been enjoying lazily sauntering out of my bedroom at 8:30 or 9 am and having a cup of tea BY MYSELF :) Not to mention my husband who is self-employed much prefers the late to late life. So, my jealousy often burns into fury when I see our provider still relaxing in our bed at 10am while I`ve been up for hours with OUR small chidren. But really I haven`t a leg to stand on there because he often works later into the evening (as this is his preference) and I do not have to work outside the home at all. Regardless, I want this to change....

Soooo tomorrow... I will wake everyone up early, including myself and see if I can`t somehow FIX this ridiculous problem.