Early morning rules

{this picture was taken a few months ago, early one morning. i'm pretty sure isaac is regaling his tired mama with stories or dreams, here.}

This is what happens, more or less, every morning:

Isaias (4) wakes up the earliest, usually between 6 and 6:30. He is supposed to leave his room quietly, so as not to wake up Isaac, take his pull-up off, get dressed (or at least put underwear on beneath his jammies), and come quietly upstairs. And then he is supposed to play quietly upstairs: read books on the couch, play with his hot wheel cars, or play playmobiles, all quietly. [I'm not sure if you noticed, but the word "quietly" was used four times in that paragraph. Yep, that's the key.]

We've had seasons where he struggles with one or more of the above things. Usually, the waking-up-of-Isaac one. But for the most part, he does this well. Many mornings I come out into the living room and find him playing quietly, on his own.

And then there's Isaac (5). Isaac cannot seem to do anything quietly. He wakes up singing at the top of his lungs. He gets out of his bed noisily, leaves his room by slamming the door behind him, bounds up the stairs, runs across the kitchen and living room, and either begins playing (ahem, noisily), or runs cheerfully and loudly into our bedroom to say good morning to us. I love that boy, I do. I even understand him. I don't even mind so much being woken up by my cheerful boy, it's really just that I don't want him to wake everyone else up so early.

Now that it is so light in the mornings, or whenever Isaias struggles with the whole please-do-not-wake-up-your-brother thing, Isaac has also been up early. And when Isaac is awake, all of Isaias' manners regarding playing quietly are immediately thrown out the window.

And then there are two: jumping and leaping and hollering and wrestling and playing a game of football and climbing and yelling and building forts and running and all of those things boys do.

We live in a relatively small house. About one minute after Isaac wakes up, the rest of the house also wakes up. Sometimes one by one, sometimes all at once.

So I try to preempt that. The minute I hear Isaac come up, I creep out of our bedroom, so as not to wake Mark and Audra, slip into the hallway, so as not to wake up Ella and Adelia- who are at the other end of the hallway- and peek into the living room to remind the boys to please, please remember to play quietly together since everyone else is still sleeping, and to abstain from all jumping and leaping and hollering and wrestling and playing a game of football and climbing and yelling and building forts and running and all of those things boys do. You know- read a book! play Legos! sit still and do something- but please do so quietly!

I'm not always cheery about this, since, you know, I was sleeping one minute before this. After about the third consecutive time of doing this, I'm really not cheery about this. I usually flop back into bed, all bitter-like, and whisper loudly to Mark about how this makes me crabby. Just how difficult is it to remember not to run pell-mell across the hardwood floors at 6:07 in the morning!? And really, must I remind them every.single.morning not to holler?! Everyone else in the house is trying to sleep! Grr!

Often, then, I begin my morning grumpy. Grumpy because I was awakened from precious sleep, or because one of the girls was awakened before they were ready (which then, you know, affects the entire morning until nap time comes around- because they're tired and fussy), and grumpy because I'm having to deal with correction issues before 6:30 in the morning.

Other than my attempts to manage the noise from my bed- or rather, quick trips from my bed to whisper fiercely into the living room- I've also attempted the following:
-Get up earlier, so that I can monitor the noise level. This works. It's just that I'm not always motivated to get up so early. And I am naturally an early riser, but to ensure that I get up earlier, it would have to be in the five o'clock hour, and that's pushing it.
-Change my (grumpy) attitude. Or- pray about my grumpy attitude, at least.
-Discipline them when they're too noisy.

The whole both-boys-up-early scenario occurred again over the weekend. On a Sunday morning. The only morning of the week that we can "sleep in" (until 8:00). I think the boys were both up a few minutes before six, and I was cranky. I waited, and sure enough- heard Isaac come upstairs, and bang the hallway door as he ran into our room to, you know, say "GOOD MORNING!!!" and give me a kiss. And then bang the hallway door again on his way back out. About a minute later, Adelia woke. Then Ella. Then Audra began stirring, and I began muttering to Mark about it. (Mark, who was sleeping until I woke him up. Because he can sleep through anything. Isaac even came over to his side of the bed to say "GOOD MORNING!!!" and I'm pretty sure Mark slept through that, too.) I said something about getting up to talk to the boys before Audra woke up and Mark said he'd take care of it.

A few minutes later he went out to "take care of it" while I hopped into the shower before Audra was fully awake.

I asked him later what he'd done. He said, simply: "I just told them that the new rule is that they have to stay downstairs until you tell them they can come up in the mornings. I told Isaias to go into the playroom when he wakes up and Isaac to stay in their bedroom when he wakes up."

And that was that.

All of a sudden I felt really dumb for not coming up with that idea on my own.

I have yet to ask Mark why it took him so long to come up with this brilliant idea. [...Honey? Feel free to chime in, here.]

But it works, this new rule. I woke up this morning at 6:15, on my very own, and everyone else in the house was still asleep (save Isaias, who I faintly heard downstairs). I came out into the living room with my Bible and journal and had a full forty-five minutes of quiet, happily reveling in the fact that all of my girls were able to sleep without being startled awake.

I am so thankful for Mark. Naturally, I would be more thankful had he saved me a lot of grief and enforced this rule, say, a year ago. But I am thankful all the same.