This clock is our new best friend.

When James finally started sleeping through the night, like a sick joke, Reese started waking at 5 AM.  We tried making her room darker, which didn’t help, we tried forcing her to go back to her room to sleep, which resulted in her throwing loud fits directly in front of James’s door, and we tried getting her to get into bed with us, just for a “few more minutes”, which resulted in more fits.

I had heard about alarm clocks for kids that let parents set the time they want their kid to wake up, and at that time the clock lights up, letting the kid know it is ok to get up. I didn’t think this would work for us, since Reese never listens to us when we ask her to stay in her room, so why would she listen to a clock? But, my nephew has one and my sister-in-law said it worked. We thought we’d try it, and I talked up the idea of Reese having her “very own alarm clock!”

I bought this one from Amazon. The Kid’Sleep Classic. It was $37, which was more than I was planning on spending but I knew the key to making it work was for her to be excited about it; the less expensive versions I showed her online from Target and Walmart did not excite her in the least. But, a cow dancing ballet in a pink tutu is really all a girl could ask for.

The clock is also a night-light, so when she goes to bed the clock has a glowing picture of a cow tucked into bed. Come 7 AM (which is the time we set it to, because for us, that’s sleeping in) the ballet dancing cow lights up.

And right now, its working. I know that she waits in her bed for the ballet dancing cow to light up, because most mornings, I can hear her feet hit the ground at exactly 7:00.

We’ve had it for a couple of months and she still usually stays in bed until it lights up.  I know that it is still semi-new so maybe in a few more weeks the excitement will wear off and we’ll be back to rising with the sun. But right now we are happy with it and I would recommend it to anyone who likes their sleep.