Wanted: Morning Motivation

I am not a morning person. Even as a little kid I despised mornings and longed for late nights. I used to stay up late to watch "All in the Family" after the news from the hallway (so my parents wouldn't see me still up).

In high school, I would only give myself enough time to brush my teeth before I headed out the door to catch the city bus in whatever clothes I found on the floor. I would get up at 7:55 to make it there by the 8:10 bell. Often times I was late so I just decided to skip and I would stay home and sleep. At this point All in the Family re-runs were cancelled and I instead watched Patrick Stewart in "Star Trek: The Next Generation". Loved that show, but it didn't come on until 12:35am (this was before the DVR craze).

I still struggle with mornings. As the days get colder, it gets harder to convince myself to crawl out of my nice warm covers into shocking frigidness that is "morning". I catch myself barganing in my head as to what activities I can skip in order to sleep more and still get out of the house on time (when we have to be somewhere, like today, Church).

"If I don't eat breakfast, I can reset the alarm for 15 minutes later."

"The kids can eat cold cereal and milk in the car. After all, we'll be driving for an hour and a half."

"A ponytail will do. Skipping the shower buys me another 1/2 hour in bed."

Seriously. I do this.

Not to say that there aren't plently more mornings where I give in, grudgingly, and just Get Up. Now that I have very active toddlers it's kind of hard *NOT* to get up. My main motivation is, "Why is it so quiet out there?" That's never good. ;)

I also fight the urge at night to get up out of bed once the kids are asleep and spend a few night-owl hours to myself, knitting or reading or going online. (I have learned that if I want to even *think* about getting up in the morning, I better just stay put and go to sleep.)

So I pose a question for all you "Morning People" - How do you do it? Why do you do it?

Or maybe better yet, I should pose these questions to the other Non-Morning People (especially the non-morning moms)?? How do you do it? What motivates you to fight against your natural desire to sleep-in? How do you combat the promise of a warm comforter over the reality of cool morning air against you exposed skin?