You Did This To Me!

Some day, Ollie will be a teenager. He'll want to stay up until 3 a.m. partying with his friends and sleep until noon. He'll wonder why Mom and Dad insist on going to bed before midnight most nights, and why they get up at 6 or 7 even on the weekends. What kind of strange people are these? Don't they know that all the fun stuff happens at night?

And we'll try and tell him that we used to be exactly the same way. We'll talk about those nights where we didn't notice it was late until the sun came up, and the days we rolled out of bed groggy to have breakfast at noon. But then we had a baby.

That baby was an awesome baby, and he slept through the night, which meant he went to bed around 9 or 10 and got up at 6 or 7. No matter when Mom and Dad went to bed, he got up at the same time, so they started adjusting to his sleep schedule. They found that when they got up early, they got to spend more time playing with him and having fun -- that the morning was actually good for something. Since most of their friends were having babies, too, most of the fun stuff quit happening before midnight.

So the answer to "why are Mom and Dad so lame?" is "you trained us to be this way."

Somehow, I don't think he'll get it, though. After all, it took me fifteen years to understand it :-).