Tales from the Trenches: The dreaded school mornings.

Once school started back up, K has absolutely every excuse in the book to NOT get ready in the morning.  (She was perfectly fine during break.)

"I feel like I'm going to throw up."

"No, for real this time."

"My foot hurts.  Look at the bruise that I have."

"My head hurts."

"Real bad."

"My stomach hurts."

"Real bad."

"I can't stand up straight."

I understand that we're going through a bit of a thing this year.  Getting her up and ready for school is more painful than a mouth full of root canals.  This morning, she was running so late, that she had no time to brush her teeth.

"That is it.  K, I'm telling you what I am going to do.  We will NEVER have a morning where you can't brush again.  I woke you up at 6:30 AM and now it is 7:40 AM.  I'm letting you know that if you do this same thing tomorrow, I will wake you up at 6:00 AM on Wednesday.  If you do the same thing Wednesday, I'll wake you up at 5:30 AM on Thursday."

"Okay, Mom.  I promise.  I won't do it again."

As it is, my alarm goes off at 6:09 AM so that I have two alarm clock smack-downs before getting K up.  I snuggle in with her.  We talk about stories and whatever it is that she wants to talk about.  It is a school lunch day, so we had extra time since I didn't have to pack a lunch.

No, it isn't because she doesn't go to bed early enough.  She goes to bed at 8:30 PM, but no later than 9 PM.  Bedtime remains the same for non-school nights.

For the love that is all good and right in the world, mornings wear me out.  K called me this afternoon to tell me about her social studies grade.  "Mom, number 8, 9 and 10 were 5 points each."  Gulp.  "How'd you do, babe?"  "I got 5, 5 and 5."  "That's great!  How did you do on your whole test?  What grade did you get?"  "22 out of 22!  I got an A!"  Turns out that K was sweating her social studies test grade.  She said that she was convinced that she was getting a D when she actually scored perfectly.  We discussed how that may have affected her behavior and about how she needn't sweat these things.  She just needs to do her best.

She has decided that she wants to wake up at 5:30 AM tomorrow.  I begged her to please wait until 6:20 AM.  We have her alarm set, which is always set for 6:30 AM, but we've pushed it back a bit for her.  She is looking forward (at least for tomorrow) of getting up and getting moving earlier.

Me thinks that she wasn't too fond of the idea of a cranky mom at 5:30 AM.  We've discussed how nice the mornings are when she can take advantage of the extra time and chill with a little bit of cartoons before the bus.

Let's hope this plan sticks.

ETA:  The morning went well.  K got herself up at 6:30 AM.  She was delightful.  She had breakfast, made her bed, brushed her teeth and we even had extra time to tie a headband in (a two people job with this one.)  She has city wide writing assessments this week, so I'm glad that she shuttled off happy, fed and well.  No complaining of the typical morning ailments, either.  I hope that this is a permanent situation, but something tells me that it probably isn't.  I'll take it while I can get it.