It’s been in the pipeline for some time now. Our old routine went a bit like this:

I would be half-awake by 5am-ish with at least 3 of us in our bed, sometimes 4 and sometimes 5 of us. I’d check my phone and hope that I could drift on back to dreamy-land for the next hour, but know deep down that there was little chance of that happening. Kids would start stirring a bit before 6am, Hubs and I would both ignore them and will them to either leave us alone for “just 5 more minutes” or get themselves out of bed. Then Hubs would start catching up on the daily happenings on his phone while I threw the covers off in a huff of “FINE! I’LL GET UP THEN!!!!!”

Not an ideal start to anyone’s day, right? Hubs would then be rushing to get to work on time, and I would be in a cranky mood after being kicked out of bed so rudely. We would often say to each other “we really need to get out of bed earlier” but neither of us are morning people, and our hearts just weren’t in it. So this has been going on for a looooonnnnng time and we definitely got to breaking point.

So something had to change. We discussed what our plan was going to be, and even though it’s early days, it’s going very well. My alarm goes off at 6:05am, and I immediately get out of bed. I have my socks and dressing gown waiting for me, and I go and make a cup of tea for Hubs and a coffee for myself. I take that to Hubs and wake him up so he can read his news in bed while the kids wake up and I prepare for breakfasts. We pretty much all have something different:

Me: boiled egg on toast (I always have boiled eggs in our fridge as it saves me time)
Frith: either a mango smoothie or some leftovers on toast
Chance: 2 weet-bix with honey
Quinn: whatever tickles her fancy which can range from porridge to weet-bix to mini weet-bix to cereal, to mango smoothie, and usually some of Dadda’s toast
Darby: used to also be a 2 weet-bix guy (without the honey) but is now super fussy in the morning. Usually wants to eat whatever I have, or eat his food sitting on my lap.

Riveting stuff, I know. So while I’m preparing brekky and enjoying my coffee in relative peace, Darby stumbles out of our bed (somehow he has been sleeping in our bed for a few months now!!) and comes and finds me. It’s actually really cute – I have the kitchen light on in the morning as it’s still dark til almost 7 (the sun has to come up over Mount Archer before we get to see it) and I get a glimpse of what teenage-Darby is going to look like – stumbling around in a onesie (gosh I hope not) and shielding his eyes from the blinding light, mumbling incoherently. Aaaah bliss.

Sunrise from our back stairs. This is 6:30am.

The extra, interrupted 20 or 30 minutes of rubbish sleep is nothing compared to waking up on my own terms and starting the day well. My sister-in-law told me years ago that a good start to the morning involved getting up before your kids, but a) I didn’t want to believe her and b) I didn’t want to get out of bed even a minute earlier than was absolutely necessary. I get it now. This is my time. And getting up is on my terms which makes me much less cranky.

Just ask Hubs…