Not me, but Mayhem.
I’m not sure what time he is waking up but it’s around 5am most days I think. I can always tell when he has an early morning because by 5pm he’s a bundle of tired just waiting for an excuse to freak the heck out. The littlest thing can trigger it.
Sunday I made pot roast for dinner. He watched me put the meat & the veggies in the crock pot. We talked about potatoes, carrots & turnips & why I was peeling them. He knew what all encompasses the phrase ‘pot roast’, that it is meat & vegetables.
But, when 5:30 rolled around he decided he didn’t want any vegetables, just meat. DH said he had to eat a bite of carrot and the white veg (no way of knowing if it was turnip or potato) and Mayhem lost his little mind. He screamed and he cried and he had hysterics at the thought of having to eat a bite of carrot and turnip. Both of which he has eaten – in pot roast – as recently as two weeks ago, with no complaints. In between the sobs he says over and over “but what if I hate it?”. Then you swallow, drink some juice and rejoice that it is over. It is one bite. And you like it. But he couldn’t calm down & couldn’t be reasoned with and so was taken to his room and put in bed, where 5 minutes later he was asleep.
Monday was a red eyed hysterical sobbing fit about wanting to go to McDonalds after TKD at 5:45. Even though he had been told before we left for TKD that there would be no McD’s, but mac & cheese instead and he had asked for Spongebob mac & cheese & was perfectly happy with the plan at 4:30.
Tuesday’s melt down was because there was no dessert. There isn’t always a dessert. Desserts are a random reward for good behavior during the day and at mealtimes. Trashing your bedroom & failing to clean it up despite repeated reminders before dinner is not good behavior. Havoc took this setback with his usual sulking & blaming others. Mayhem threw himself on his bench and wailed as though I had thrown all his toys away. Screaming “I not doing my homework now since you are being mean to me!!!!” in between sobs. He spent about a half hour on this fit, screaming, crying, protesting the unfairness of it, accusing me of being mean & not loving him and generally being really really annoying. I ignored most of it , only sending him back to the table whenever his fit carried him out of the room and eventually his homework was completed.
Then he says “I really tired Mama. I am going to bed now.” it was 7:15.
When he sleeps until 6 or 6:30 this behavior rarely happens. I don’t know why they are both suddenly up at all hours. Havoc came in our room at 1am the other night & said Mayhem was keeping him awake & could he sleep with us? DH went back and Mayhem had apparently gotten up, went in the living room, got his DS, took it back to his room and was playing Mario Party. He said he wasn’t tired. We’ve made them stop sharing a bed to minimize waking one another up. We’ve shut their door so the cats don’t go in and wake them up. Reminded them of the rule that they are not allowed out of bed until 6:00. Talked about ways to go back to sleep if they wake up early.
In two weeks the time changes, which will at least make it 6 when they wake up and not 5, so I am hoping that I only have two more weeks of this.
Mayhem is so sweet and loving and such a snuggly, cuddly little boy, except when he becomes a lack of sleep monster and I feel bad there is nothing I can do to help him with it.
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