Morning Update

I’ve been a little delinquent on my blogging this past week. Mainly because I thought that I’d see how a week of “new morning rituals” would turn out on my little guy’s new morning hysterics and report on them. Expecting only miracles, right? For the past week I have been:

1. Waking T up 5 minutes earlier. It kind of kills me to wake him up for daycare when he’s still laying down like a peaceful little angel. But I started thinking that maybe I was taking on the role of “my dad” from when I was a kid and rushing a non-morning person to be social and cheery. It had disastrous outcomes every time my dad tried (still does, when the hubs tries it with me) – so maybe me expecting to get T up and out the door in as little time as possible just wasn’t a good way to go.
2. Reading a book to him as he drinks his milk. My thinking here is that he doesn’t have to mentally engage yet – he can slowly adapt to the fact that a new day has arrived, even if the sun isn’t entirely up yet.
3. Telling him everything I’m going to do, before I do it. “Ok, now we’re going to get dressed.” “Ok, it’s shoe time! Which foot do you want to put shoes on first?” “We’re going to walk out to mommy’s car next” “After you get strapped into your car seat, mommy will put on some tunes for you.” My voice just might be several octaves higher for all of these oh-so-encouraging play-by-plays as well.
4. Letting him have his dad’s toy car to “vroom” up and down his leg in the car on the way to daycare. Because it’s just not worth the fight and dad can buy another one if it breaks.
5. Asking him to walk into daycare. Possibly in the form of racing mom. Results vary. Today? Not so much. Legs wrapped around me like a vice. But no tears, which I take as semi-success. Friday? He was into the idea of racing INTO daycare. Just didn’t want to STAY inside. Temper tantrum ensued, but he got over it, so I take that as a semi-success too. Though possibly more in hindsight than at the time -- and after I calmed my nerves with some peanut butter M&Ms as soon as I reached work.

Outcome? Mixed. I do honestly think there is an improvement as we haven’t had any major meltdowns getting dressed or getting into the car for the past few days. Walking into daycare still has its mediocre days and bad days at the moment. But I’m not sure that the improvement is because of the improvement in my parenting style (thanks to advice from friends with kids whose kids get to these stages before mine and the folks who write the articles for us crazy moms at What To Expect) or because this is just one of the many “phases” I’m going to get to experience as we enter the lovely world of Toddlers-Testing-Boundaries and it was just a shorter one for T to initiate me with. I admit that I do miss that last “snooze” on the alarm but if it wards off decimal-level 10 screaming at 7:15 then I think I’ll manage.

Week 2 of “new morning” rituals began today. Wish me luck!