Seriously, What Do We Do?

Here's how a typical 'before hours' morning goes in the Jacks family:

5:00 Callie the cat jumps on my pillow and snuggles up to my head. If a hand is available, she'll start licking it. If not, she'll very gently paw at my face until I let her know that I'm awake. Now, we have a very sweet and loving cat, but this is not her typical sweet and loving behavior. Do you know what she wants? An escort to the bathroom. Yep, we keep her food right between the tub and the toilet. Normally she doesn't need any help finding this food, but for some reason at five o'clock every morning she thinks she needs someone to walk her to the bathroom so she can have an early breakfast.

5:45 Ethan wakes up. Now the thing about this is that he usually doesn't wake up crying. He's not particularly happy about being in bed, but he goes between grunting, babbling, calling out, and even occasionally singing until either Alyssa wakes up or we go into the room to get him.

6:30 Alyssa wakes up. Sometimes this is perfectly fine, but most of the time she needs to go to the bathroom. She used to be able to go to the bathroom during the night by herself, but now she's afraid. She, like the cat, needs an escort. I've tried putting a night light out, both in the bathroom and the hall, but she's still scared. So basically I get out of bed each morning to walk my daughter the three feet (if that) from her bedroom door to the bathroom door. Then I walk her back to bed. This is when Ethan sees that Mom is up, and he wants out of his crib, so we all get up for the morning anyway. This isn't so bad. We've learned to deal with it.

But today is Saturday! Saturday is a day to sleep in!

So this morning, when Alyssa hollered for her escort to the bathroom, I told her that if she needed to go that bad, she'd have to go by herself. It came down to Alyssa crying in her bedroom, and Ethan crying right along with her. Even after she had her brilliant idea of putting her robe over her head so she wouldn't see the dark, she went back to her bedroom to cry hysterically. When I went in to talk with her, I told her that there were no monsters in our house, and when that didn't work, I tried making the deal that if she were to actually see a monster, all she had to do was yell, and either Brian or I would come running. She didn't buy it.

Okay, so we've come to grips with the fact that our kids are early risers. We've tried just about everything there is to try to get them to sleep at least until seven. It's not going to happen, so we're okay with that. So here's my questions.

1. Is it wrong to let an almost two year old sit in his crib for an hour each morning when he's not exactly happy, but not exactly sad?

2. How the heck do you get your five year old to overcome the fear of walking to the bathroom by herself?

3. And how hard do you have to push a cat away before she realizes that you are not alive for the sole purpose of guiding her to her breakfast?