The girls have been asking for alarm clocks in their rooms so they could take responsibility for waking themselves up for school in the morning and not have to rely on Greg and me to drag them out of bed by their toes.
Like any good parents, we decided alarm clocks were probably a good idea but the girls should have to earn them since it was their idea and we were mad at ourselves for not having thought of it first.
I think Greg made them each do twenty deep water bobs in the pool and then they were off to purchase the clocks.
The girls anxiously awaited bed time that night because they knew at some point during their peaceful slumber, any number of screeching noises could startle them awake at a time of their choosing; their favourite song, a news broadcast, a mind-numbing busy signal sound or my least favourite, static between two radio stations.
Any new system comes with kinks and in the spirit of healthy competition, the girls found their fair share of reasons to argue over the clocks.
Hanna: Ellie’s clock is set three minutes ahead! That means when her alarm goes off, she’ll be awake three minutes earlier than me!
Me: Why don’t you set your alarm to sound three minutes earlier?
She did just that. Well, sort of. She set it to ring at 7:03am (telling time is not her strong suit) thus setting her alarm to sound six minutes after Ellie’s.
Ellie tampered with her clock for about an hour after bed time, setting faux-sleep-trials where she would lie very still, the alarm would sound a minute later and then she’d do it over and over just to be sure she understood the process.
Hanna tried the same trick. She would set the clock to blare two minutes after the current time but it took her approximately three minutes to figure out all of the right buttons and would miss the scheduled alarm, worried she would now have to wait a full 24hours to hit that exact moment in time to try the drill over again.
They had problems figuring out the a.m. and p.m. options and at one point Ellie yelled, “Are these things from the Dollar Store or something?”
Oh goodness no sweetheart, Wal-Mart.
The morning came and both girls awoke at 6:00am and 6:03am respectively. Their alarms were set to ring at 7:00am so, they stayed quiet, watching their clocks tick down to 7:00am before they would spring out of bed, slap their snooze buttons (leaving me to turn them off for the day after wondering for two hours what kind of strange noise was coming from the bedrooms) and head down to the kitchen to report on the technology.
Hanna’s clock successfully buzzed at 7:01am while Ellie’s didn’t make a sound. It turns out, with all of the checking, re-checking, manual familiarization, burpees and rapid blinks at the machine, Ellie had made one fatal error, she hadn’t turned on the volume. At least, that’s what I choose to believe because the thought of any alarm clock sabotage by a sibling is well, unthinkable.
At the very least, they were both ready for school on time and Hanna had some playground banter “Did you know the high today is twenty degrees and there might not be a hockey season?”
The next day during Chloe’s nap, Ellie’s clock started ringing at 2:15pm. It does work! Chloe however didn’t flinch.
