Sleep, a taboo word in my household it would seem!

As you may have read in one of my previous blog posts, Jack has been going through a phase of waking up at silly o’clock. I was having weeks of 4am starts, then on to an 8-hour stint at work, then coming home to a horrendously overtired toddler who was furious with life and just wanted his bed, meaning bath time and our usual evening routine was a whole load of stress for everyone. Something had to be done.

I’d seen the GroClock advertised and had heard lots of mixed reviews, but surely anything was going to be an improvement, so was willing to give it a shot. Thank god for Amazon Prime, the next day I was sat in Jacks room setting up his new clock.

The concept is simple, it’s blue with stars on when it’s night time, and then the sunshine comes up when it’s time to wake up. We set the sunshine to come up at 6.30am – the likelihood of Jack staying in bed/quiet for much longer than that just wasn’t realistic, and 6.30am isn’t too horrendous (except for weekends, which is a killer).

That night, we sat Jack down and showed him his new clock, and that he had to say “night night” to the sunshine and when the stars came on it meant that it was bedtime – he didn’t show any interest whatsoever… The GroClock comes with a story book called Sleepy Farm, so we read that and put him down, reminding him that he has to wait for the sunshine to tell him it’s morning.

There was me thinking it would be some miracle sleeping aid and from that night on, he would sleep blissfully until 6.30am every morning, alas that was not the case. The first morning he starting hollering at 4.30am, I went in and told him that he’s not allowed to get up until the sun comes up, and to tell me when the sun starts shining. Cue lots of tears, yelling and Shane and I taking it in turns to try and settle him. Eventually, at about 5.45am I went in to his room and sat with my back to him, telling him that mummy was waiting for the sun to come up because that’s when we could start our day. For the next 45 minutes I sat half asleep in his room, back killing and desperate for a wee – Jack thought it was hilarious and kept trying to get my attention, but I didn’t react. FINALLY, at 6.30am, we watched the stars change in to the sunshine, he was amazed when the clocked changed, and then it was finally time to get up!

Since then we’ve persevered and haven’t got him out of bed until 6.30am, the wake-up times have been getting more and more reasonable, usually he’s awake from about 6am and then just starts shouting ‘sunshine wake uppppp’, he then gets so excited when the sun finally appears, asking the sun if it’s had a nice sleep, it’s adorable.

It’s turned out to be the best £20 I’ve spent in a long time, he loves chatting away to the sunshine and Shane and I are equally loving having a bit more sleep. Don’t get me wrong, waking up at like 7.30/8am would be the absolute dream, but having a bit more of a morning structure has definitely made for a happier household! Next up will be the transition from cot to bed, I dread to think how that’s going to go down – any tips are very welcome!