Time for a change

As you may know, I do a paper route everyday which means I get up around 4:30 am (except Sunday mornings when it is more like 2:30am). That in itself is really no big deal. Lots of people start their days around that time every morning. The problem for me is that our lives have never been morning kinda lives. Monty and I used to both work the late-late shift getting home around 4am. Our "normal" bedtime has always been about the time others are just getting up. As we have had kids and jobs have changed that has slowly moved up to a more respectable bedtime. Still not what most people would consider normal but it has always worked for us. On a typical day I get to bed between 12am and 2 am which gets me 2-4 hours of sleep before the paper route. Normally I take a nap after the route and we start school around lunch time. I have been able to pull that schedule off for about 3 years but for some reason it is no longer working. I have slowly gotten behind on keeping my house and, all you moms know, once you get behind a little it only takes the blink of an eye and you are drowning with no end in sight. Well, that is where I have found myself so something had to change! My first choice was to stop doing the paper route and devote all my time to my home. Since financial burdens prohibit that from happening at the moment I had to find another solution. For about the last month I have been slowly changing our household schedule. I have been making myself stay up in the mornings instead of taking my nap. Even on the days I only get 2 hours of sleep-I do everything I can to stay up. That has given me a few hours every morning to get things done before my kids are up. When they get up we have breakfast and start school in the morning. We can normally be finished with school between 1 and 3pm. After chores have been done and school is finished for the day I try to get in a nap. It has been really tough. I still don't always get to bed much earlier but my internal clock is slowly changing. I am happy to say I can now see the light at the end of the tunnel.