Sleep?! Who Needs It!

I need help, actually my whole family does.  We have a loving, energetic almost 3 year old ball of fire on our hands and he thinks that waking up anywhere between 4:30 a.m. and 5:30 a.m. is acceptable - EVERY.FREAKING.DAY. and truth be told, it's not.  We are all exhausted and this is causing our evenings to be really, really tough. 

I've googled and read every possible thing on what you can do for a child who is constantly rising really early in the morning.  So far the following have not worked for us:

Going to bed later
Going to bed earlier
Covering him up with extra blankets
Making his room darker
Trying to get him back to sleep
Trying to convince him to play quietly in his room
A night light

The only other thing left to try that I can think of or read of is white noise.  We are going to try a fan in his room to see if that will work, but other than that I am at a loss. 

At first we thought it might be that Ryan's alarm wakes him up, but low and behold on his days off Cole is still up.  He runs into our room asking us to play and then proceeds to fly down the hallway turning on all of the light switches (for some strange reason our light switches are at child height, weird I know).

Please, oh please send me any and all of your suggestions.  But please don't say toughen up and deal with it that's the joys of parenthood, because I am an overtired expecting mother and I may just hunt you down and sick him on you for a good solid month.  All others would be greatly appreciated.

Oh and don't forget to enter my giveaway.