Wednesday, November 04, 2009

good nite!



i find it amusing to think back on how my definition of a good night's sleep has changed over the years, especially since having children. last night samuel woke up 3 times (once to be fed, twice for his pacifier) and then was up for the day at 6am. and i considered that a pretty good night, in comparison to some we've had recently...

i've no idea how i missed the memo, but i completely forgot about daylight savings this year. this was probably a good thing, since i have come to dread the fall time change at least a month in advance. in previous years the "keep a strict routine" fanatic in me has started preparing a week early, pushing tristan's bedtime forward 10 minutes every evening until he is going to bed (and hopefully waking up) an hour later than normal by the time we change our clocks. i had a sudden moment of panic when, as we were driving home from a very fun harvest festival at our church, i turned to josh and said "is tonight daylight savings?" oh, good heavens, it was and i hadn't prepared myself nor tristan. the routine fanatic side of me nearly had a hernia while the more rational side of me decided to stay calm, focused, and keep breathing.

of course, it didn't turn out half bad as far as tristan was concerned. samuel, on the other hand, (who i wasn't nearly so worried about) is Completely Messed Up, but that's not the focus of this post. as josh as i were getting ready for bed, after peeking in on our angelic, sleeping little men, i realized, "oh shoot! i forgot to change the time on tristan's good nite lite!" and so, his little glowing moon turned into a little glowing sun at 4:30 the next morning (which felt more like 5:30 for him) and out of bed he came springing and telling us that his sun came "pop!"






oh, have i not mentioned the sun popping thing before? basically, after i had ordered the night light and it was on its way, i totally started bringing tristan's attention to the sun and the moon and how the sun means its time to be awake and play and how, when the moon comes out, it means its dark outside and time to go to sleep. well, the book "the very hungry caterpillar" by eric carle illustrated the whole thing perfectly. i'd read him the first two pages where the moonlight showed a little egg on a leaf and then the the next page shows the sun coming up and the egg opening to reveal a caterpillar. i believe the exact words are, "one sunday morning the warm sun came up and pop! out of the egg came a tiny and very hungry caterpillar." well, i believe that the author intended for the word "pop" to indicate that the caterpillar had broken out of the egg. tristan, however seems to believe that the sun comes up and goes "pop". so every single morning he tells us that his "sun came pop" and for some reason he has to take one of us by the hand and show us the sun, just in case we don't quite believe him.

in actuality, when the blue moonlight changes to orange sunlight, the night light makes no noise at all. which is great because there have been a few days (not many, but still!) where tristan has slept past the time that the sun starts to glow. there have also, unfortunately, been a few too many days where he is awake much too early (like 4:30am) and when we tell him to wait for his sun to come out, he does for awhile, but then gets bored and starts to cry. i can't blame him...i think that sitting around for an hour waiting for a light to change would bore me to tears as well. at first i had that stash of toys from the thrift shop that i'd hand to him when he awoke too early. that worked for awhile, but even those can get boring when you're holed up in your room all alone. that is why we haven't set the sun to glow past 5:30 yet.

and so, because i am The Queen of Asking for Advice, i became a fan of the good nite lite on facebook and posted a quick question on their wall. and what do you think i received in response? not a computer generated reply referring me to page 30 of the FAQ's. not even a human generated email. i got a phone call. from the founder of the company. who apologized to me for not calling the previous day as arranged because he had just come home from china on a business trip to find out that his father had passed away. i totally felt like saying, "um, your father just passed away, why are you on the phone with ME??" but i refrained and let the man talk. he was super friendly and seemed like just a regular guy. he created the nite lite for his son who was an early riser, so he had some great tips for me on how to get tristan to stay in bed longer. i think that once we are completely done potty training and no longer need to give tristan "poop treats" we'll start with either a sticker chart for staying in his room, or else do a small treat every morning that he stays in his room, whichever works out better.

at any rate, i was thrilled that the dude called me and he made sure to mention that if the nite lite doesn't work out for us, we can return it and get a full refund. now, i don't have one of those fancy giveaway blogs where bloggers review products and get paid for it. i'm honestly just "reviewing" this nite lite because it is such a cool and unique product and because i am super impressed with the company. i've had a ton of other moms ask me how the nite lite is working out for tristan, so i suspect i'm not the only person who has had to deal with early wakings on a constant basis. it isn't cheap, but the whole money back guarantee thing makes it pretty worth it.

6 comments:

Meredith said...

Wow. Cool.

Lovella ♥ said...

That is just the neatest night light. I may look into them for grand gifts for Christmas. I wish I could give your a reference if I do order one. . you should get some kick back deal.
Also. .I enjoy your story telling immensely. .even with less sleep .. you are still good.

Nicole said...

I love that idea! I think I'm going to look into that too :)

kelly ens said...

pretty cool night light. i'm impressed that the founder called you :)

Angela said...

I am blessed to have a very good sleeper but I still love that light... great gift idea! Where did you get it from? Online? what website?

heidi said...

angela: i put a link into the post, but you can't really see it now that i look at it. the website is:
http://www.goodnitelite.com/index.php

as far as i know, they only sell online at this point.