A month ago, I took a week off my parenting duties and visited my brothers in New Mexico. I have to admit that I didn't miss the early wake-up calls, enforced evenings-in and general household responsibilities. It was nice to just hang out and be a regular person again. Which isn't to say that I didn't miss Max or Barbara. I did. It was good to see them again when I got home. I'm not one of those "it's always good to get back home" type of people, but vacation is nice and home is nice and each of them makes me appreciate the other. In any case, as soon as the plane touched down at RDU, I was ready to dive back into my normal life.

Over the last three or four months, Max and I settled into a fine rhythm. He'd wake up around eight, eat breakfast with Barbara and then come wake me up at about 8:30. I was already awake, of course, but it's always nice to be able to sneak in a few extra minutes of half-sleep. Our mornings were enthusiastic and on the go, but not crazy. Max would eat lunch and then settle down for a two-hour nap, and then he'd romp around the house or the backyard or the park or wherever until it was time for me to make supper. When Barbara arrived home, he would show off in an exceedingly cute fashion until it was time for bed. In all, the days were tiring but manageable.

In the week during my absence, however, Max discovered an extra gear. The morning after I got back, he got out of bed for good a little after five-thirty in the morning. This after going down at about 10:30 because my flight had been delayed. Barbara and I tried to convince him to go back to sleep, or lie down in the bed with us (I don't know why we try this; all he wants to do is jump on top of us) or simply play quietly. Sometime around seven, Barbara decided she wasn't getting any more sleep and got up to feed the boy. He then proceeded to run around non-stop the rest of the day.

That included nap time, where he jumped on his bed and ran around his room for a couple hours before collapsing into a coma. Forty-five minutes later, he was ready for action once more.

In the days since, he has been getting up sometime between six and seven--sometimes earlier and occasionally later. In any case, 6:30 is probably an average wake-up call.

Six-thirty may seem normal to most people, but not me. My bedtime is around 1 a.m.--this has been scaled back from 2 to 3 a.m. pre-Max--and I really can't get to sleep any earlier, no matter how tired I might be. And with the proper regimen of caffeine and 12-hour allergy medication, I've found that I can function quite well on the 6 hours of sleep I get when Max gets up at 7:30. Five hours or less leaves me groggy and grumpy.

So I decided to convince Max's body that it needed to sleep until seven-thirty in the morning. Down here in the New South, we've had one of the hottest years on record. The high temperature from May 3 to the end of that month topped 85--and often it eclipsed 90. Last week we caught a day with a high of merely 88, and it felt like the first stirrings of fall. I don't like the heat. Excessive exposure to the sun and heat gives me headaches, so generally I like to hunker down in air conditioning somewhere. But I needed to tire Max out. So I embarked on the plan of us walking to nearby parks (those within 3/4 to 1 1/2 miles) during the heat of the afternoon. Him walking the entire distance, I mean. None of this "Daddy, carry me" stuff. He had to walk all the way to the park. Most of the time, I carried him back. And let me tell you, thirty-some-odd pounds of tired boy on your shoulders is a pretty heft load to balance for a mile-and-a-half. But it worked. Max slept in until about eight every morning after our hikes, and I felt like I was actually getting in a little real exercise myself.

It worked the first week, anyway. Week number two found him reverting to his pre-seven wake-up call, previous days's exhaustion be damned. I couldn't believe it. His body compensated for the extra effort in a mere seven days or so.

Maybe, maybe not. After all, he was probably running a mile or two every day in the house and around our yard, so the only thing unusual about the hikes were the constant effort and exposure to the sun and heat. His later wakeup calls might well have been unrelated to the hikes.

This newfound energy must be a phase, right? After a while, Max will return to the energetic--and not frenetic--child I knew before I flew to New Mexico. I ran the phase theory past a friend of mine who happens to be the father of a ten-year-old and a five-year-old.

"Oh yeah, it's a phase," he told me. "I'll let you know when it passes."

Yeesh. I can't do this four or five-hours-a-night thing much longer. Sooner or later, I've got to figure out a way to get more sleep.

It may be later. A lot later. But I do have one advantage: If my friend is right, I've got years to muddle through.

Jon Worley is tired of a lot of things, but he's still happy he's a dad.