Houston... We Have *Main Frame* Coming On-Line...

This weekend I got Salamander an alarm clock.

Don't faint on me, please.. I know very well how old he is and that an alarm clock should have been part of the morning routine by now.
But he's not an "easy riser", and on bad days anything and everything will "set him off" (Salamander that is, NOT the alarm clock). Until now, I had little confidence that the alarm clock wouldn't get chucked THROUGH the window in a fit of rage on a bad morning..

We set the alarm clock together last night, 6.40 am (I usually start rousing my brood around 6.45 am, so I figured the extra 5 minutes would be a good transition time).

Imagine my (delighted) surprise when at 6.45 am, a fully groomed and dressed Salamander showed up in my kitchen, all ready to go.

No nagging, no endless "time to get up NOW", no tugging the blankets off his bed, no fights around taking a shower. no endless debates around what he's going to wear.

Alarm clock went off, he got up, he did his business, he got dressed, he came downstairs. Period. As simple as that.

I am PSYCHED.


Of course AFTER we went back upstairs together to get Potatey up, any and all of Salamander's executive functioning systems went straight back to *off line* again, as it was waaaay too much fun to torture a still very sleepy (and quite cranky) little brother (pay back for all those years that Potatey would be the one doing the torturing ..).
And of course little brother had to retaliate and we ended up with the usual "Cirque du Chaos".

Ah well, baby steps, baby steps.. I'll get Potatey an alarm clock too.. See if I can insert a little competition into the "getting ready in the morning" game.