Bradley has an internal clock. I have yet to determine which time zone he actually exists within, but make no mistake, he definitely has an internal beat that only he understands. Every Saturday and Sunday he manages to try and start his day between 5:00 and 6:00 am. Most days he is successful, some odd few days he is persuaded to nap for a wee bit longer. Every holiday, he pops up at the same early hour, sometimes to be reintroduced to sleep but usually to greet the day. Perhaps this wouldn’t be quite so odd if in fact he had a set routine. He doesn’t. Or rather he does, but his routine for holidays is vastly different to his routine for school days. Vastly different.
On school mornings, I have to wake up all my kids. Sure the girls have alarms and they go off, and get tapped for snooze and go off again, and tapped for...well, I think you get the idea. As if they read that latest research study indicating that the first three minutes of the day dictate how well the rest of their day is going to go... they apparently need to spend those first three minutes in a sleep fogged rendition of a conversation with me. Then they are up and at em! For the most part, I mean Madison is - Sydney just kind of trails behind. For Bradley, his school morning has been the following: he wakes up when I wake him up at 7:00. If I get him up at 7am, we have just the time we need to change a diaper, do his meds, change his clothes, put his shoes on and usually put a sweatshirt on because mornings are always cooler when you are outside waiting on the bus. And by cool, I don’t mean that we look cool hanging out in the mornings, rather the temperature is pretty chilly and we need coats...although Bradley tends to put me in mind of Snoopy and “Joe Cool” as he waits for the bus, but that’s because he’s Bradley.
I tried waking cranky (I mean Bradley) up earlier so he could eat breakfast each morning. Haha, jokes on me. My son does not want to comply with standard operating procedures in the morning unless it was his idea to wake up in the first place. My interference is tantamount to a cry for war and thus leads to revolt. In the midst of said Revolution, I am getting notes home that say he is starving at school, that I should send an even bigger lunch because he eats it all at snack...and so on. So I held a meeting - in my head actually, determining a course of action that might result in a better morning and then better day. At the same time, the idea was to figure out a way to get him to leave the house without some sort of comfort item. Huh.... starving and without comfort, what better way to start a day?
So I addressed the food issue first. My son won’t eat breakfast unless it’s his idea and the only way it’s ever his idea is if he wakes up on his own. My solution, send breakfast out the door with us to wait for the bus. I make him smoothies. Bradley loves smoothies. He absolutely loves the smoothies from McDonald’s, so he got them quite a bit until he started accepting the ones that mom makes. Big happy smile, he drinks the ones I make for him. Well, sort of anyway. Mom’s smoothies have to be fresh, he’ll still drink some of one that his been kept for him overnight, but he won’t drink as much of it or drink it as quickly. AND, there has to be a Fiber One bar chaser. Chocolate chip bars are preferred, though the chocolate brownie bar is sometimes allowed. I hand him his bar, he points to his smoothie cup for me to grab (too cold for him, he won’t carry that), I hand him his small backpack with his Diazapan, and I carry his big backpack with all his needs, and we head out to sit on the step and wait for the bus. In theory, his bar is his replacement comfort toy, but I'm okay with that. We get out of the house the same way every day and he gets some food in his tummy before the bus gets here; honestly, a win-win all the way around.
Downside? Yeah, I never thought I’d be running a blender first thing in the morning almost every morning, but I know the girls are pretty happy with it and Bradley is eating, so... blend away. 😉. Three minutes and a smoothie....what better to get the day started, I mean really!
When your brother has a difficult diet, sometimes the best treats are all part and parcel to your day. Good grief these kids are spoiled. Considering Bradley has to gain a few pounds before his next GI visit, let the spoiling continue! Considering the girls are still growing, yeah...I’m okay with the blending. No one will ever accuse me of being Martha Stewart, but I’m okay with that too!
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