Here Comes The Sun

It's been going on for a couple of months now, and somehow I've just noticed the pattern. Ivy goes to bed at sunset and wakes up at sunrise.

It's such a beautiful, natural thing and I hope it lasts, even for a little while. I love that she's already so connected to nature, and I'd like to think that living on the boat contributes a bit to this rhythm she's gotten herself into. We don't use a lot of artificial lighting and we have curtains that let the light shine through. Just last night I was thinking that we maybe needed to make the v-berth darker so that she'd go to bed sooner, but now I'm rethinking that.

Maybe I'm taking too much credit for it, but it seems that it's most natural thing in the world that we've all defeated early on in our lives with artificial lights to make the day longer and curtains to make the night longer. We stimulate ourselves with coffee in the day, then take a tylenol P.M. when we can't wind down at night. Then we wake ourselves up with terrible screeching alarms, but only after hitting the snooze button multiple times.

I have to admit that I've never been a morning person. Far from it, in fact. At my worst, I was going to bed at sunrise. I was in college and had scheduled my earliest class at 4pm because I felt so trapped by my horrible sleep schedule and decided to just go with it.


As I sit here at 6:30am, roughly an hour after being up with Ivy for the day, I realize that I'm really growing into this new cycle of sleep and awake. I admit, sometimes 5am comes awfully early. I also admit that coffee has been my friend lately. Even still, I'm far more awake in the morning than I ever would expect, even when I go to bed an hour or two later than Ivy. If I followed in her footsteps and went to bed at sunset I'm betting I could cut coffee out entirely, but those late hours are when I finally get work done so at the moment it's not an option for me. Best part is that she naps frequently, and I can always take one with her.

I love that this little girl is teaching me how to live a more natural way, and I have to admit that I'm glad I'm not too ignorant to entirely miss the point. I could easily be resentful of these mornings, but then I'd be missing out on so much.

I know it may not last, but for now I will work with it in hopes that she will always remember to pay attention to the rhythm of nature.

(If we lived in Alaska this would be an entirely different post). ;)