Countdown to the Cage Fight

Several months ago, my parents--at my suggestion--gave Cubby one of those spiffy light-up clocks that you can set to change color at a certain time in the morning. The idea is that kids who can't tell time yet will just check the light to see if it's time to get up. Ideally, this eliminates the child wandering around at four in the morning, because he's awake and thinks it's time to get up.

It is never time to get up at four in the morning. The clock tells them this.

We stopped using it for awhile because Cubby was sleeping in so late (7 a.m.! practically a college kid!) and then Charlie was in there with him and we were just trying to get Charlie used to sleeping in the room. But a couple of weeks ago, we decided to start using the clock again, in an attempt to keep Charlie from bouncing out of bed at 5:15 a.m. and waking up his brother.

It worked. Charlie stays in his bed until the clock turns yellow. The clock is set for 6 a.m. This means that at 5:58 a.m., I start the countdown to detonation.

Detonation of peace, that is. Because at 6 a.m., I hear the door to their room being flung open, pounding feet in the hallway, the crash of our bedroom door as they burst through it, and then Charlie's little voice proclaiming, "The clock is yellow. I want to go downstairs."

And then, because A. is the only parent currently sleeping in our room (I'm temporarily located in the small adjoining room with the baby), I hear him mumble dazedly, "Okay, go downstairs. I'll be right there."

It's a very nice way to ease into the morning, as you might imagine. And then, when we do get downstairs, we usually find them both sitting on the heating vent in the living room, fighting over the precious warm air coming from the furnace. Then they demand breakfast.

And so begins another day of the "enjoy it, it goes so fast" stage of parenting.