Alarm clock

When I was a kid I had this little trick I used to get myself to wake up at the right time in the morning. I would pretend to unscrew a little piece of my head and pull out a slice of brain. Not kidding. Then I would unroll a piece of paper that happened to be rolled around this slice of brain, and I would write down the time that I wanted to wake up. Then I would roll the paper up and screw the brain piece back in. And I would wake up at that time (or thereabouts). I did this often. Anyway- Eli has always had his own internal alarm that unfailingly dings at 6:50. Sometimes 6:52 or 53. There are days that I would love for him to sleep a little later. So yesterday I unveiled my trick to him. He looked at me with bugged out eyes and cried out weakly for his dad when I proposed that we try this on him.... But in the end he let me do it. So we decided not to up the ante too much and just tried to push him back to 7:10. We went through the process and wrote 7:10 and got him all tucked in. Theo wondered what we were up to, so through quite a fit of giggling all around we showed him the trick. He wanted in and wanted me to write 7:50- which is about when he usually wakes up anyway. We did. Then, as I was snuggling him before he went to bed he started unscrewing his brain-piece-clock and wrote a new number. I asked him 'what'd you write?' His response? NOW!

The results: Theo was up often during the night. Shoot. Eli opened up his eyes as his clock struck 7:10. We were all amazed. Tonight I'm writing 8:00.