Early to Rise Challenge: Day 12

 

It's day 12!  I think I'm doing about average - only a little stumble when we switched back to Daylight Savings Time.  The above time is misleading, though.  Partly because it took me a full minute to take a picture that wasn't completely blurry, and mostly because my husband "turned off" his alarm with the snooze button and then got in the shower exactly fifteen seconds before the buzzer went off again.

I didn't have much time to ponder today's topic: "Swim Upstream."  This was a MOPS Tuesday - one of my two busiest days of the month wherein my schedule runs something like:

1. Get up.
2. Get dressed.
3. Quiet time.
4. Dress children.
5. Make breakfast.
6. Go to MOPS.
7. Shove lunch into children.
8. Take Pippin to preschool.
9. Put Sunshine down for a nap.
10. Enjoy roughly one hour for napping and/or chores.
11. Get Sunshine up.
12. Hand her a snack.
13. Pick Pippin up from preschool.
14. One more free hour or so.
15. Leave for small group Bible study.
16. Put children to bed.

Today, I also ended up doing steps 3a (fall asleep in the middle of Isaiah because I woke up too early) and 8a (suddenly realize I was supposed to bring an item for an appreciation basket for some EMTs and firefighters who are giving various talks to the preschool this month and make an extra trip out to the grocery store for a case of soda pop).  Step 9 was consumed by the terribly mundane task of switching all our online billpay accounts to our new credit union (we decided to ditch our old credit union after Christmas after a number of incidents of poor customer service and online support).  Then, after Bible study (instead of a study, the group threw me a baby "sprinkle" - with two other kids so close in age I don't really need a full shower), we cleaned the kitchen and I made cranberry crumb bars for tomorrow's ladies' Bible study group at church and strawberry oatmeal streusel muffins while my husband did a load of laundry that I've been putting off.

I may have overfilled them a tad...

I suppose I don't really agree with Crystal that getting up early is particularly "outside the box" or counter-cultural.  Lots of people are natural early birds.  They're just quieter about it than the night owls who gasp in horror at the concept of actually seeing the sun rise.

But the idea of creating a more disciplined lifestyle is more counter-cultural.  Early rising may or may not be a part of it - it all depends on how and why one goes about it.  For me, I usually use Lent as a time to increase my self-discipline and give up things that interfere with that.  This is the second year I've given up TV, and I added in a fast from my favorite message forum because it was getting to be too much of a time drain.  The Early to Rise challenge is nicely synergistic with my Lenten fast (usually when I wake up early, I spend it watching the news instead of being productive), but the actual act of getting out of bed on time is really the smaller part.