Late to Bed, Late to Rise

It’s summer!  I get to sleep 8 hours every night, and that’s pretty great.  I can go to bed at midnight or 1:00 a.m. and get up at 8:00 or 9:00 in the morning if I want.  Or I can go to bed earlier and get up earlier, and I still manage to get eight hours of sleep.  I love our relaxed summer schedule.

It’s actually a great thing that I can stay up and sleep in during the summer, because my heavens!  My children are getting older, and they love being out and about until it gets dark.  Then it takes them a bit of time to get everything ready for bed, and before I know it, some of them are still up and it’s past 10:00, practicing and instrument or completing a chore they needed to do but didn’t do in a timely fashion.    It’s not a problem for them, per se, because they love sleeping in during the morning as well, but my introvert personality takes a beating.  I’m pretty much done parenting by 8:00 p.m!

I can’t help but to remember those days when I put those little people to bed at 6:30 and had hours to myself at night!  The days of parenting preschoolers were so intense, but those multi-hour blocks of time at night were so terrific!  I’m having a bit of trouble adjusting to having my big kids bopping around during my night time hours of bliss.  Often they aren’t specifically doing something to be disruptive at that time of night, it’s really just that i’m not used to it.  I know, I know, it will only get worse!  But right now,  I still stay up later than they do, and a lot of time I get up earlier than they do as well. Alone time.   Ahhhhh!