On Bedtimes

I remember when my bedtime was moved from 7.30 until 8. I was able to stay up and watch the Cosby Show, and I must have been about 10 or 11. It was big news. My brothers' room faced the street and they never had a shade for their window. I remember that during the summer they would be in bed in their room and look outside to see families with 2 and 3 year olds out taking a walk. They said they would always roll out of bed onto the floor so that the little kids would not see these much older kids in bed SO early. All this to say, my family was an early to bed, early to rise family.

I suppose it is not much of a surprise, then, that we are an early to bed, early to rise family too. However it is not necessarily because of my roots. There is nothing inside me that likes getting out of bed. It is actually the worst part of my day. I am in no way a morning person, but have adjusted to my current life. We started putting HC to bed early after reading what I call the "Sleep Bible", and realizing that she was such a scheduled baby that she needed some major structure with her sleep. And we have never looked back. We wake-up at 5.30, I feed Annelise while Dave takes a shower, and then Dave takes Annelise while I take a shower. Dave is off to work by about 6.15 and home a little before 5pm. We feed the girls, give them a bath and bedtime routine. They are down around 6pm. We then eat dinner and hit the bed by 9pm. It works.

We often get comments about the girls' bedtimes. We hear everything, from questions about how in the world we get them to sleep that early to why in the world we put them to sleep that early. We have also heard some, well I might not exactly call it criticisms, but pointed questions about things we are missing out on because of the early bedtimes.


Yes, we are missing out on hanging out with other families in the evening, and missing out on doing things together as a family. However we are also missing out on tantrums and other things that might be associated with not getting enough sleep (Annelise gets up at 5.30 no matter what time she goes to bed).


So, I decided to list all the reasons why I am thankful our girls go to bed early.
1. I have a marriage! It is so nice to have some hands free time, time where we can play Yahtzee, clean the house, set goals and plan for the future over a nice bottle of wine, etc. I swear this early bedtime thing has saved my marriage.


2. The girls love their schedule and know what to expect every day in terms of naps and meals and playtime. And I love to be able to plan my days around these things.


3. We can have people over to our house in the evening and we do not have to worry about it running into bedtime. I LOVE this. We have folks over all the time, and I can just tell them to come over at 7 and have time to clean the house before everyone arrives. We have a community group that meets every week at our house, our ministry team meets here. We have people come over for dinner, we are just always busy, and thankfully folks do not mind coming here.



4. It is easy to go out. With all the hard work done by 6.30 I have no problems with Dave going out to get a beer with a buddy, and he in turn lets me go out for my pedicures or whatever else I want to do. When we have a babysitter, it is easy to just put the girls down and then the sitter just gets to sit here, eat pizza, watch TV and get paid WAY too much (when did babysitters begin getting paid more than minimum wage?).

I guess that is about all I have to say. We love the early bedtimes and I do not feel like I am missing out on anything, besides overly tired children who do not want to obey, oh wait I deal with that anyway.