Rise & Shine Challenge - Day 2

Good morning friends! 

Today is day 2 of the Rise & Shine Challenge from The Abundant Mama. Yesterday's challenge was to think about how you want your mornings to flow, feel, and sound. Once we're aware of how we want our mornings to flow and to feel, we can better work on getting them to go that way!

In today's challenge email, she talks about how sleepiness or sleeplessness can take you to the Land of Bitter and Sour - I think I know this all too well! I'm a grumpy morning mama if I haven't had enough consistent sleep! Good sleep can really be key to your energy and mood levels each day.

So today the challenge asks, what is good sleep for you? For me, I at least need consistent sleep. I'm always the least well rested when the kids have been awake in the middle of the night, no matter how many total hours of sleep I end up getting.

Take this morning, for instance. I went to bed about 10:30pm last night, which is only about half an hour later than usual for me, but because it was Casey's last night off I wanted to stay up just a little bit later. I slept fairly well, but then Connor woke up at 5am.

I could hear him just tossing and turning for a few minutes, barely fussing. But then he gradually started fussing more, eventually leading to a full on cry. I knew that if I actually let him wake up that early, the both of us would end up having a horrid morning.

So I went into his room and made sure that he was okay and not stuck in his crib bars or anything (it happens). I gave him his pacifier, laid him back down, and left the room. He fussed for only another minute or two, but then fell back asleep.

At this point it's about 5:30am, and I laid back down and fell back asleep, dreading the alarm that I knew would be coming in just a short half hour at 6am. And when that alarm went off, I chose to ignore it and stay in bed, because the 5am interruption had left me much too tired to be up on time. I managed to squeeze in another half hour of sleep before Cavin came and crawled into bed with me and asked to go play a video game downstairs (which resulted in some attitude when I told him no!).

The point of the story: I don't do well with sleep interruptions! Good sleep for me is at least consistent, but of course I'd love to be getting around 8 hours too (not that that ever happens!).

Today's Rise & Shine Challenge is to think of your nighttime rituals, and to try to think of ways that you can foster an earlier bedtime. I'm happy to say that this is something I've already been working on for the last week or so!

I've switched up my night routines with getting the boys to bed, and through my efforts I've managed to push their 9pm bedtime down to about 8:30pm! It's only a half hour difference, but it gives them a little bit more sleep, and it gives me more time at night to get things done so that I can get to bed a littler earlier too. Just a little bit of extra sleep can make a huge difference!

If you haven't signed up for the challenge yet, but you'd love to know how to get more sleep and make your mornings better, I'd encourage you to go sign up! It looks like she'll be including the previous days' challenges in each email, so you won't miss out on anything!