The Monster in My Bed

BuggaBoo is an interesting creature. He likes things to be done just so, and he likes them to be done NOW! One of his most enjoyable activities is crawling into bed with us at the crack of dawn and nursing. Now, I like this ritual as well, but only so much. My perfect morning would be having the boy child wiggle under the covers, nurse once, and then drift off to sleep for another hour or two. His perfect morning would be to wiggle under the covers, kick The Hubby, demand to nurse, pretend to sleep for five minutes, demand to nurse, and then repeat until he finally wakes up Doozer much too early for her liking.

So mornings are something that need to be dealt with. See, Doozer is a fitful sleeper until about 4:00am, so I'm constantly nursing her or switching sides or trying not to move so she finally settles down. BuggaBoo likes to enter the scene between the hours of 5:00am and 6:00am, and since I can't fall asleep at the speed of light like The Hubby can I often don't get a lot of unbroken sleep. I've tried explaining to BuggaBoo that if I don't get sleep in the morning then I'm a grouchy mommy more prone to yelling and such, but at dawn he's not exactly thinking about the rest of the day.

We tried giving him a bright clock and telling him he can't come into our room until the first number was a seven, but that didn't work so well. He woke up at his normal time, came in, and I informed him it wasn't seven yet and he needed to go back to bed. Then every fifteen minutes, just as I was starting to fall asleep he would yell, "Is it a seven yet?" I would say, "Look at your clock," and he would say, "Oh, not yet!" Then the plug got knocked out of the outlet during play that day and I foresaw the plug-knocking happening every day since I don't have a protected outlet near the clock. I didn't want to reset the clock every night so we needed to think of something different.

What it really comes down to is BuggaBoo is very hungry in the morning. He has discerning tastes and often doesn't want to eat what's for dinner. I tell him that's it, that's what we're having, deal with it, so most of the time he doesn't eat enough and goes to bed with an empty tummy. This translates into massive nursing sessions at dawn o'thirty.

Last night I tried leaving out a snack for BuggaBoo in his bedroom. Inspired by these cute lunch plates I made him an underwater scene. I'm sorry there isn't a picture, it was 11:00pm when I finished! I cut three fish from a low-carb pancake, put them on a blue plate, and gave them raisin eyes and banana leather bubbles. Raw pumpkin seeds were the rocks at the bottom of the fish bowl. Thinly sliced carrots were cut into seaweeds shapes, and nori was cut into waves for the surface of the water. Cheese was cut into a moon and little dots of cheese for stars. It was pretty fun and easy to put together!

BuggaBoo didn't even notice that they were fish. He kept insisting that they were just pancakes! So I'm a bit bummed by that. He still bugged me a lot this morning, but he only nursed once. I had promised to let him paint this morning so he just couldn't stand to see me in bed anymore.

However, there is something happy about all this. He has been in a much better mood this morning. So I think that qualifies this as a success. Hooray! I'm ready to repeat this experiment tomorrow.

There's just one catch. I can't think of tons of food that I can safely leave out overnight that aren't full or starches and sugars. Any ideas?