 |
| Me, as a night-owl. |
When I was a kid, my siblings never wanted to be the one to come wake me up. If someone disturbed my sleep (unless it was Dad or Mom) I was wrath unleashed! I come up swinging, something I'm not very proud of. Really, no one should have had to wake me up. I should have been able to do it on my own. The problem is that when I do sleep, I'm a very deep sleeper.
I've never really needed that much sleep. When I was a baby, my parents would tell me stories about how I would only take one nap a day, and a very short, trying nap at that. My mom likes to tell me about how she would walk around for over an hour trying to get me to fall asleep. Finally, I would drift off. She would try to lay me down, and I would wake up re-energized! My short nap was sufficient. At least I slept well at night.
As I grew older, it was literally impossible for me to over-sleep. I remember coming upstairs crying on numerous occasions because I had been laying in bed for hours and I just couldn't fall alseep. That, along with several other factors, convinced me that it was better to just stay up reading. I began to get less sleep, and then falling asleep became much easier. I also became more of a night-owl. It only got worse in college.
In my first two years of college, I averaged four hours of sleep a night. Crazy, huh? That means sometimes I got around two and sometimes around six. I actually did quite well on that, except for the occasional class that I slept through.
During my mission, I got on a better schedule. As a missionary, you are required to go to bed at 10:30 p.m. and wake up at 6:30 a.m. I would go to bed, but I couldn't always fall asleep. Sometimes I'd lay there for a few hours before I'd drift off. Even exhausted from working all day, sleep sometimes is a challenge.
When I finished my mission, I got right back to my old sleep schedule. In college for a while, I was the last one to sleep and the first one awake. My attempts to help myself go to sleep earlier included always having a 7:45 a.m. class. That way, I would usually go to bed at least by 2:00 a.m.
With my first year of marriage, things were slightly better. Unfortunately, Grig is also a night-owl, and often we would stay up late together. Sometimes, on a really bad night, we would fall asleep around 4:00 a.m. However, we tried to set goals to go bed by midnight.
After we had Kevin, we did begin to go to bed around midnight. Kevin however, also seems to require a little less sleep than most babies (but not as little as me, thank goodness). He's always been a good night sleeper, but he would stay up until midnight with us,and then wake up around 8:30. It worked for a while.
Then, Grig got a new job. His job begins at either 4 or 5:00 in the morning. That means I have to wake up at 3 or 4 a.m. in order to make him breakfast. (This is an entirely voluntary thing. Grig has told me on numerous occasions that I don't actually have to do that, but I like being able to see him in the morning, and it helps him get to work on time if I help make breakfast and lunch.)
We are now going to bed anytime from 8-9:30. That's the earliest I've ever gone to bed in my life. We consistently go to bed early and wake up early. Strangely, I'm beginning to realize that I like it.
All my life, I thought people were crazy for getting up this early. Right now, it's 4:27 a.m. and I'm blogging. Kevin is asleep and I'm all alone. It's quiet outside and even the crickets are sleeping. I have time to think and relax before the day begins.
Occasionally, I go back to bed after Grig leaves, but usually I try to stay up and I'm finding that I enjoy waking up early more each morning. Sometimes on weekends, when Grig doesn't have work, he and I revert to our old habits.
However, we are both finding that Early to Bed and Early to Rise really isn't such a bad thing after all.
Go figure.
