Green Means Go

When we first moved Harper into her big girl bed, she was very content to behave much like she did when she was in her crib. She would call for us to come get her, and never got out of her bed until we got to her room. She did this for a few months and we were very happy with how easily she transitioned to a bed without bars. ;)

Cue little brother.

Literally the first day we had him home, her sleep habits started changing. She started waking at sometimes 4, 4:30am. As you can imagine, having a new little baby at home, sleep for parents is hard to come by, so it became a real problem. She sleeps with a sound machine, so I don't think she was ever bothered by hearing him cry or by me shuffling around in the middle of the night to feed him. I think she was just thrown off by the change in family dynamic.

We tried giving her instructions to stay in bed until the she saw the sunshine in her window. This worked a little bit, but as Jasper started sleeping better, we needed her to stay in bed later than 6am. :) Plus, she was up multiple times before it was light outside, coming to our room to make sure we weren't wrong and wanted her up sooner. Oy.

I decided it was time to take serious action. I looked online, and saw this alarm clock. I read all the reviews on the product and felt like it would be great. You can set the clock to be a nightlight at night glowing yellow, and you set the time you'd like for your child to get up in the morning, at which time it glows green. It does have a face with a digital clock and one with hands too, meaning the clock can grow with your child as they learn to tell time. You can also set it to have an actual alarm for those hard-to-wake older kids. However for now, it's been fantastic to give Harper the visual cue of a glowing green clock friend to know when to get out of bed. She absolutely loves it and though she's not a perfect sleeper-inner yet, things have improved 1,000%. She stays in bed until it turns green maybe 3 out of 4 mornings, and the other mornings we usually only have to give her 1 reminder to go back to her room and wait.

Oh, and when it does turn green, she absolutely can't wait to run in and tell us "green! green!". It's pretty cute.

One funny story. We still have the video monitor in her room, so I can spy on her. A few days after she got the clock and had gotten the hang of waiting in her bed for it to change, I was watching her on the monitor. I had already sent her back to bed once and she was sitting up in her bed waiting. Once it turned, she got SO excited and started pointing to her clock saying "green green!" then jumped up, hung on to the bed rail and started stomping her feet like she was making wine out of grapes!! It was so fun to see her be so happy and do her little celebration dance without knowing I could see her. She makes me smile. :)