Starting Our Day

It might be time for a king-sized bed!  There just isn't room for all 5 of us in our current bed and the kiddos are only going to get bigger.  One of the babies will usually first join us in bed around 4am (they alternate who sleeps through the night and who wants some company).  We are largely done with the middle of the night feedings, which is nice, but also means we are adjusting to a new routine (since the daily feedings are every 4 hours, we are switching from 4am/8am etc. to 6am/10am, etc. which throws everything off a bit) 

We would NEVER allow Oliver to watch TV at this age, but as is common with younger siblings, all three watch Caliou or Berenstein Bears while Adam & I (and 3x/wk Oliver) get ready to leave the house.  Wed/Thursdays when I work from home happen at a much more leisurely pace, since I don't have to worry about getting myself presentable.  Usually, the babies are in great spirits and can now play with toys (or in Alex's case steal toys). 

We went through a phase where the babies would wake Oliver up (anywhere from 4:30-6am) and he wouldn't be able to go back to sleep.  We would actually hope that the babies would wake up for their feeding on the early side, so that Oliver was less likely to be disrupted.  Oliver had a hard time comprehending that it wasn't ready to start the day, despite how dark it still was, so we got him the alarm clock below.  We've had sporatic success with it so far.  The clock allows you to set the time that the body of the clock lights up green.  On mornings that Oliver wakes up and sees the green light is already on, he quietly gets out of bed and comes up the steps to our bedroom - perfect!  Unfortunately, that only happens about once a week.  On the other days, he hollers for us just like he ordinarily would.  Since there is often a baby trying to sleep in that room too, we don't just let him make noise until the light turns green (which is what we'd do if we didn't have 3 kids in one room).  So, one of us goes down and crawls into bed with him until the green light comes on.