Wondering Why Stella Is Grumpy?

I had an insight this morning. Not an On-Site Insight (TM) but just a garden-variety insight. I am the mother of two charming and extremely well behaved children and a natural morning person. I'm up bright and early every day and working east coast hours.

But by the end of the day I am psychotically grumpy and willing to do almost anything to hustle the children into bed. And today it finally occurred to me: in my brain, it's like the kids are staying up until 11 pm every single night.

In point of fact, they're going to bed at a very reasonable hour, and we have a nice structured bedtime routine and all that jazz. The super nanny wouldn't find much to fix in the kids' behavior.

Unfortunately, it's all your dear correspondent's fault.

What to do, what to do? Honestly I'm not sure what I can do. I mean, this is the gig people. I have a few ideas:

• I could delay my afternoon green tea fix until four or five in the afternoon to get that gentle caffeine boost a little later in the day.
• I could be more disciplined about not doing recreational computer work between the end of my work work and bed time.
• I could chill out.

I think recognizing the problem is probably the first step to solving it. Seriously, pinpointing the causal relationships between early rising and late-day grumpiness may just be enough to make me exercise a little more self-discipline and reduce my harpy factor measurably.

I'll let you know how that all works out.