Taking Back My Early Mornings.

**Please note: This is not a sponsored post. I am simply sharing a product I found that has worked for me!**

Let me introduce you to my two adorable girls. 

Here's Sydney. 

She's almost two.

She is a rockstar sleeper. 

Most mornings she will sleep at least as late as 8:30... often later. Don't hate.

Here's Emily. She's nearly three-and-a-half. Clearly very fashion conscious.

She's a bit of a wild card.
Not only does her wake-up time vary from 5:30am to 9am (usually in the early end of the spectrum), but most nights she comes into our room at least twice, trying to get into bed with us. For a while we would send her back to bed, unless it was just an hour or two until we got up. The problem was that she had no way to distinguish how early she was coming in. So if she came in "too early" and we turned her away, she would throw a royal fit, which would often end with Sydney waking up, too. 

BUT NO LONGER.

I remembered my friend mention a Mickey Mouse clock they got for her boy that had a feature that would let him know when it was okay to leave his room in the morning. 

In sheer desperation that only a sleep deprived parent can understand, I scoured amazon.com and came upon THIS .

"American Innovative Teach Me Time! Talking Alarm Clock and Nightlight"

 Here's the *basic* scoop. The clock face is always on. You set a time for the nightlight to come on, and turn off. 

For us, 7:30pm-9am.

Then you also get to set the time that the yellow nightlight turns green--the time before which you, as the parent, wish not to be disturbed. 

For us, well... that depends on the day now. Initially, we tried 7:15, I think. A time that we felt we could handle, but that wouldn't be too much of a challenge for her. On the weekends we set it a bit later. Aaaand I may have forgotten to change it after this weekend was over. 

I showed Emily the clock on the computer after I bought it, and she was SOOO excited to have a special clock in her room. She would ask when her clock was going to come multiple times a day. Naturally, when it arrived she needed to help open it. 

Have I mentioned how much I love amazon's new "hassle free" packaging option?

Inside of their box was this box:

And inside that cute little box was this beauty...

The clock has a pink, blue, and yellow ring you can choose from for the front. 

**Sidenote: This clock has a "little sister" version you can find HERE:

We opted to go with the more expensive one because it also has a feature that teaches children how to read clocks. Plus it came with a wall adapter, and we didn't want to have to be changing batteries.**

So how effective was it?
Pretty effective for our lil' munchkin.

The first morning, not so much. We explained the concept to her the night before, and she was so excited to see the clock turn green. Somehow the whole "stay in your room until it turns green" part didn't seem to sink in. As it got closer to the "changing time", I took her in to show her how it changes, and it totally blew her mind.

This shot was from this morning, when the girls slept WAAAY late. Granted, they were up past 10 (Emily past 11, as we later learned) the night before, being goofy little hooligans in their room.

From that morning on, she has gotten the concept. There has been one or two mornings where she has come in saying, "My clock is green! But... I don't want you to go check..."
Yeah. Right.
As though I can't roll over and check what time it is myself.

 But the last week or so has been AWESOME. The last couple days she has even voluntarily gone potty before coming in to announce the changing of the clock.

Do I feel this was $40 well spent?
Absolutely I do.

No more 3am visits from our girlie asking for breakfast.