Morning alarms

[pegkerr]

5:50 a.m. my alarm goes off. I get up and turn it off immediately. I go into the girls' room to wake Delia. This is necessary because Delia cannot awake to an alarm clock. I stroke her arms and legs quietly for about three minutes before she blearily rouses. Once she's awake I re-set my alarm for 6:30 and go back to bed.
6:07 Rob's alarm goes off, clock radio set to an incredibly obnoxious sports radio station that I just loathe. He doesn't wake up well to an alarm--he just doesn't hear it--so what usually happens is that I have to jostle him several times and repeatedly demand that he get up and turn it off. I cannot take fart jokes at the best of times, much less at that time of the morning. He staggers to the girls' room to make sure that Delia is moving (she frequently dozes back to sleep), and then goes downstairs to make sandwiches for the girls' lunch
6:20 Fiona's alarm goes off. She manages to get up on her own.
6:30 My alarm goes off again. I get up immediately again.
6:50 Delia leaves for school. Usually Rob goes back to bed at this point, setting his alarm for later in the morning.
7:50 Fiona leaves for school
8:00 I leave for work.

Fiona does a better job of booting her brain up than Delia or Rob do (it helps that her school starts later than Delia's), but she still isn't very talkative in the mornings. I've learned over the years that if I tell Rob anything that I want him to remember (please pick up a quart of milk today; don't forget to pick Fiona up after school; I have a meeting at church tonight) I'm more or less wasting my breath if I tell him before 10:00 a.m. in the morning. He simply WILL NOT remember it.

I wish there was someone in my family who was a morning person, besides me. There is certainly very little conversation at that time of day.

Comments

[flourish.livejournal.com]

Ugh, me and Mr Flourish's dad have this problem all the time. Mr Flourish and his mom are both very lazy in the mornings, and we're up and chatting, which drives them nuts ("We can HEAR YOU TALKING and it is LOUD!")

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Possibly all morning people are fast wakers; I wouldn't know, I know so few morning people. (But hey, you get to hang out at conventions with Pat Wrede and Jane Yolen for the three or four hours before anybody else gets up :-).)

Not all fast wakers are morning people. I jump out of bed when the alarm goes off, and often get useful ideas while thinking about work problems in the shower only minutes later. And I can do it at 0600 if I have to; but I consider setting the alarm for 0800 to be getting up early, because "morning" is the period of time between 1000 and 1400.

[jenett]

I've turned into a morning person (I need to be at work at 7:15 or so which sort of forces it.) but I've always woken up fast.

My ex-husband took forever to wake up, and it took multiple nudges from me over the course of half an hour to get him moving. I found it was less frustrating for me if I just got up before he did, let his alarm go off, and went and nudged him as needed after that, since I'd be instantly awake as soon as his went off anyway.

It did mean I discovered that I really liked the quiet of the morning for getting my own thoughts together, and these days, I get up at 5:30, or even 5 if I have stuff that didn't get done the night before (cleaning and dipping cookies in chocolate, in this case.)

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

I cannot take fart jokes at the best of times,

You are very lucky, then, that you had daughters rather than sons! Now, I am not prone to thinking girls-do/are-this and boys-do/are-that, but it is my observation from real life that generally boys think farts are much funnier--and much more worth talking about!--than girls do.

When P was about three, he was riding in the cart at Target, and suddenly announced in a loud voice, "I fart. But we say 'pass gas.' Excoos me."

When all the kids lived here, E and I were the morning people. These days, P wakes to an alarm and functions well in the morning on work days, but he still sleeps late most weekend days. J, B, and R are not at all morning people. When he was a young teen, I one morning called B's name more than 30 times (I counted) before he responded. (He did start waking to an alarm sometime in high school.)

[aome.livejournal.com]

Why does Delia have to be at school THAT early?? O_o Ugh.

My family wakes up reasonably well on weekdays (Two bounces, but I do have to prod MiniPlu a bit); however, my husband, while mostly awake, cannot keep to a schedule and I'm constantly prodding everyone to get MOVING. So - I hear your frustration.

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

Her school starts at 7:30. It's ghastly.

[hobbitbabe.livejournal.com]

Madness. It just seems wrong to me for kids to be travelling to and from school in the dark, which she must be doing for some of the winter.

[blpurdom.livejournal.com]

I thought it was bad that Ben and Rachel have to be at their high school at 7:55 am. Ben's usually on time but Rachel is often late. The buses sometimes thwart them, because I simply cannot convince them to leave earlier when it's raining, due to the fact that that means everyone is driving at about half-speed for no good reason.

OTOH, I used to be at my high school every day at 7 am because that's when Concert Choir started, so a 7:55 start would have been a luxury for me.

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

OMG! Sounds like hell on earth. I'd be b*tc*y as hell with my sleep so disrupted.

[peacockharpy.livejournal.com]

Mr. PH and I are not morning people, but Meg is. (Rob's schedule is still wildly random. But when he's awake -- which could be 8:00 a.m. or 6:00 a.m. -- he's on.) I try to be aware and not go with my first (sarcastic) responses when talking to her before school.

Of course, I would be more able to cope in the mornings if I did not sit up until 2:00 a.m. every night working. But we do what we must.

bad memories

[mizzlaurajean.livejournal.com]

you bring back with this post. I was horrible to wake up in the morning often shouting and swearing at my parents and having no recollection of it when I actually got up.

We tried the rattly alarm clock in a pie pan even, having several alarms etc to no avail.

My high school started at 7:10am so my long bus ride began at 6:10am.
My freshman year I got up at 4:30am to get all ready and prefect.
By my senior year I got up at ten to 6, combing my wet hair out on the bus.

Early adulthood wasn't must better starting work at 7am. But you all have my sympathy.

I think you need to hook them up to something that shocks them but won't wake you up.

[irinaauthor.livejournal.com]

Steve wakes up all by himself between 4:45 and 5:00. On workdays I barely manage to drag myself out of bed by 7:45. On days I do wake up earlier, he's always so happy to see me. He keeps saying, "Isn't this great? I wish this happened every day! You should try to get in the habit of waking up when I do, wouldn't that be fun?" But I'm resigned; he's a morning person and I'm just not.

[kk1raven.livejournal.com]

Not waking up well to an alarm tends to cause problems in life. Is there any chance that an alarm that flashes lights instead of making noise would help Delia and/or Rob? I sometimes think about getting one of those because being woken up by a noisy alarm clock tends to give me a headache, which is not a good start to the day on the rare occasions when I really need to be woken up.

[whiskeychick.livejournal.com]

i so feel your pain. Living it here, too.