Our family comes from a long line of big sleepers. When our son was smaller, other parents would enviously ask, “Wow, how do you get him to sleep until 10 a.m.?” We’d just shrug and say, “It’s in the genes.”

But when Alex started school last year, those genes became a real problem. You see, waking our son is a bit more challenging than raising a zombie from the dead.  In my desperation, I rather short-sightedly purchased a “howler monkey alarm clock” for his bedroom. (You can read about that episode here.) The clock disappeared suddenly last fall. No one is fessing up, but I believe my husband might have been the culprit. (And I have to say, I understand. The howler monkey scream was making him twitchy in the mornings.) Still, it wasn’t a big issue because Alex attended afternoon kindergarten; sleeping in was a perk.

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