we have started a new routine for the weekends. our standard routine has been that madelyn storms into our room and matt or i get up to feed them while the other one stays in bed and sleeps, or tries to anyway, for another hour or so.
this weekend we decided to try and teach madelyn how to work the t.v. and leave out some breakfast for them. friday night i showed madelyn how to turn everything on for cartoons in the morning, told her that there would be milk for her and mason in the refrigerator, and that there would be a special breakfast on the table. then i set out pop-tarts (special organic ones - they have never had pop-tarts for breakfast before), put milk in the fridge, and switched the t.v. to the disney channel before going to bed ourselves.
i heard them wake up, madelyn squeal with delight about the pop-tart, and the t.v. turn on. but then our door opened. the audio on the t.v. wasn't working. this happens sometimes with the cable box when you first turn it on. so i fixed the audio and headed back to bed. then our door opened again. "mom, it isn't x show." "you have to wait for it to start" (curse you dvr for conditioning my kids to not understand watching live t.v.). and then our door opened again. "mom, is there milk in the refrigerator?" "um, did you look?" "no, okay." and then maddux woke up. it almost worked.
we tried again on sunday with much better results. all of the kids slept until at least 7am (not that maddux didn't wake up twice during the night) and i think we got to 'sleep' until around 8. when i got up and made our 'real' breakfast - eggs, bacon, and potato pancakes.
an extra hour of sleep in the morning is worth a pop-tart breakfast. love.
2 comments:
Excellent idea and follow through. Love the cursing of DVR.
I like that you feel the need to justify the pop-tart. I guess I probably did when my boys were your kids ages, too. But now they are a regular breakfast food ... once a week probably.
We did the same thing, too, with our boys when they were little. Had a snack ready for them in the morning and then several of their toys out for them to play with. The good thing about it is it conditions them to do things for themselves when they wake up and it gets them out of the habit of having to eat "breakfast" firs thing when they wake up. Now, since the boys are older, they could probably function straight through until lunch without even needing me :)
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