What a difference three quarters of an hour makes!

After several sleepless nights and very early mornings because of our little buddy’s new summer morning schedule and utter lack of understanding of his parents severe need for beauty sleep, we now have a temporary solution in place.

Shaena, crafty as she is, pulled out our old moving boxes and packing tape from the storage closet and covered the windows in Ethan’s room. It's not pretty but a genius move as it turns out as Ethan is now getting what seems to be a deep sleep again and is not waking up as early. Believe me when I say that 45 minutes makes a world of a difference in the morning! Ethan is still expecting playtime and fun and games at 5.30am, but that is definitely the preferred option to 4.45am!

Next up is to actually measure our windows and purchase real blackout blinds, hopefully in the next couple of days and definitely before the summer.

Speaking of which; I am very curious and anxious to see how we will all react to the (in)famous Swedish midnight sun! For those of you who have not heard of the midnight sun: Up north in Sweden the sun basically never goes down at the height of summer, which of course is fantastic and really cool as it makes your days so much longer, but it also makes it very difficult to sleep unless you are either used to it or you have covered your windows very carefully.

When I was younger and lived up there the midnight sun did not bother me at all as I was so used to it, but now that I haven’t been up there for such a long time, I have a feeling it will take a few days to reacquaint myself to this phenomenon again. For Shaena and Ethan, adjustments will definitely have to be made as the midnight sun is nothing like anything they have ever seen before.

Suggested alternative solutions to bridge this include but are not limited to:

- Blacked out ski/swim style sleep-goggles for everyone
- To cover a big cardboard box in garbage bags and simply put the box over Ethan's cot overnight

Oh well, I guess time will tell.