Getting Up, A Progress Report

Fans, as you know, we told Joe that he, and Clara, could leave their room and play quietly if, after waking up in the morning, they found no one else was awake.  This pronouncement led, as you also know, to the morning that Joe scared Julie out of her skin by pretending to be an excited, panting puppy (what else?!) on the sofa in the living room.  Since then, we can report that things have been a bit smoother, but it is clear that the bambini are still working out the subtleties of this new found freedom.

Friday evening, for example, Julie and Ted were sitting on the couch putting the holiday cards in their envelopes and slapping the address labels and stamps on them while they watched TV, when who should come around the corner?  Fans, you should have seen the looks on their faces, which were all "Well, well, well!  What have we here?  TV?  Stickers?!  Such untold delights!"  Luckily, we'd read all about "jack-in-the-box-ers" popping in and out of bed and thought this was just one pop, we decided to pursue the same strategy and make like their getting out of bed was no big thing and it was SO humdrum, what we were doing (The Good Wife?  More like The Boring Wife.), and marched them right back to bed.

So far, between the two of them, Joe wakes first more often than Clara, and when he does, he patters into the living room and it would seem, from the evidence, turns on the lights on the Christmas tree, reads a little Mercy Watson, and then does some coloring, time permitting.  This morning, we found Joe and Clara at the dining room table coloring.

If Clara wakes up first, she makes a bee line for the big bed upstairs.  So far, it's happened twice.  Once, at 3:41am, when she found herself carted right back down stairs.  She was clearly confused.  She was up.  She'd done her part and left the room instead of crying in her bed, and she was back in her bed?  What's up with that?  Mama?  Dada?  Tough conversation number 89: explaining to a two-and-a-half-year-old who doe snot know clock time, when one should put one's self back to sleep upon waking, and when it is o-kay to get up and find the Big People or get up the Little Man who knows what quiet activities are probably permitted.  Eventually Clara Jane just seemed to throw in the towel.  Probably because it was before 4am.

The second time Clara Jane woke up before Joe was yesterday morning.  She high tailed it for the big bed.  She climbed on up and wasted no time--no time--getting herself to the middle ("I go there.").  It was after 6:30am, so in the middle she stayed.  (Berenice tried to be in the middle, too.  It didn't work.)