Sleepin' In...

On any given week, I wake up early four days out of seven. That's not bad. I used to get up around 5:30am for those four days, but thanks to technology (and continued positive work evaluations...) I now work in my basement. That gives me four extra hours of sleep each week. That's not bad, either.

This schedule has worked out well for years and years. It's worked out in another way, too. Many in my family are night owls. You can get away with that if you homeschool. So on the nights when I don't need to get up early, I'll stay up until the wee hours of the morning. I didn't think about sleeping in too much--it was just something I was able to do on the days I didn't work.

That all changed at the end of June of this year.

That's when we got a puppy.

I'm not the kind of person who dispense advice, at least I don't think I do (maybe I've come across "preachy" in this blog, and if so, I apologize...). But there's one piece of advice I give freely--not to everyone, but to certain individuals. I will tell parents expecting the birth of their child/children that they should get as much sleep as possible, because once the child/children arrive, sleep becomes an unobtainable goal. I tell expecting parents this because each time we brought home another baby, I forgot just how much sleep I didn't get. I remembered the feedings/diaper changes/other new baby stuff, but I ALWAYS forgot that a good night's sleep would become something that was never a given.

It's been years since we've lost sleep because of a newborn in the home. When my son found a puppy that needed to be adopted, lack of sleep was not something I thought I'd have to even think about. And truth be told, if I kept a schedule Benjamin Franklin would approve of, I'd be getting enough sleep all along.

I should say, at this point, things have gotten much better for me as far as sleep goes. When we first got the puppy, it was during the longest days of the year and the dog knew when the sun would come up. Plus, we hadn't trained him so we were worried he needed to go out around 6am, or 6:15am. The dog is learning, as are we. On the days when I'm not working, the whole house is no longer being woken up by a barking dog. Thanks to my son (who is the dog's owner...), he's been so good at taking care and training his dog--a real rock star.

The other day I turned over after an uninterrupted sleep-filled night and snapped a picture of my old digital alarm clock. It was almost 8am, and it felt good to sleep in.