Daylight Sucking Time
I hate this day of the year. The day that Daylight Savings Time begins is my least favorite day of the year, just ahead of the day that Daylight Savings Time ends and the day before my anniversary when I still don’t know what to get Ellie.
I haven’t liked this day since I was old enough to realize the clocks were cheating me out of an hour of my weekend. 15 years ago, that hour came right out of my video game time, threatening to cut to single-digits the number of hours I’d spend in front of the television over the weekend. Ten years ago, I had to deal with the crushing responsibilities of high school, and that hour usually came from my sleeping time so I could have enough time to finish my homework while preserving my double-digit hours playing video games. Five years ago, I was in the work force, so losing an hour of sleep on the weekend was no big deal since I could make it up by dozing off at the office on Monday.
Today, the day Daylight Savings Time begins of 2006, I’m a full-time parent, and I’m the fourth most important person in the house when it comes to my priorities of making people sleep. I need all three children to sleep the recommended number of hours* everyday to ensure that I have enough time to accomplish everything I need to do everyday, like blog, sleep, and reminisce about the days when I had enough spare time to play video games.
To get the children to sleep, I’ve established a strict schedule where all three kids sleep and eat at the same time everyday. For example, even at their young age the twins know that they go down for a nap at 9:30am, that they wake up at 10:30am, and that I stop ignoring their complaining and get them up to feed them at 11:00am. When the clocks spring forward, or, heaven help us, fall back, I have to hope the children realize the clocks are different and nobody tries falling asleep, waking up, or expecting a meal an hour earlier or later than they should.
The twins made the adjustment well today. I fed them their bedtime bottles 30 minutes earlier than usual last night, they woke up 30 minutes earlier than usual overnight, and they woke up for the day at 8:30am this morning, and they woke up right on time this morning. When I say “right on time,” I mean they let me sleep in an hour, but that’s okay because they had been letting me sleep in by half-an-hour every morning. For the rest of the day they did everything right on schedule, so I’m confident that they’ll be back to letting me sleep in 30 minutes again tomorrow morning.
I feared Abbie would be tougher to shift since she’s older and more set in her ways, like Billy Packer and his love for the ACC except she screams less. We put Abbie to bed at the normal time last night, and obliged by waking up at the normal time this morning, which sounds great except that the hour shift means she slept an hour less than normal last night. She added to her deficit by taking half her normal afternoon nap. This meant she spent tonight acting crankier than a baseball fan forced to sit through a rain delay on opening night, so by the time her newly adjusted bedtime rolled around she was willing to fall asleep whenever we told her to. Fortunately the time change moved her bedtime up by an hour, lessening the amount of time we had to deal with her crankiness. There’s one advantage to the day Daylight Savings Time begins.
* That number is “as many as possible.”
I haven’t liked this day since I was old enough to realize the clocks were cheating me out of an hour of my weekend. 15 years ago, that hour came right out of my video game time, threatening to cut to single-digits the number of hours I’d spend in front of the television over the weekend. Ten years ago, I had to deal with the crushing responsibilities of high school, and that hour usually came from my sleeping time so I could have enough time to finish my homework while preserving my double-digit hours playing video games. Five years ago, I was in the work force, so losing an hour of sleep on the weekend was no big deal since I could make it up by dozing off at the office on Monday.
Today, the day Daylight Savings Time begins of 2006, I’m a full-time parent, and I’m the fourth most important person in the house when it comes to my priorities of making people sleep. I need all three children to sleep the recommended number of hours* everyday to ensure that I have enough time to accomplish everything I need to do everyday, like blog, sleep, and reminisce about the days when I had enough spare time to play video games.
To get the children to sleep, I’ve established a strict schedule where all three kids sleep and eat at the same time everyday. For example, even at their young age the twins know that they go down for a nap at 9:30am, that they wake up at 10:30am, and that I stop ignoring their complaining and get them up to feed them at 11:00am. When the clocks spring forward, or, heaven help us, fall back, I have to hope the children realize the clocks are different and nobody tries falling asleep, waking up, or expecting a meal an hour earlier or later than they should.
The twins made the adjustment well today. I fed them their bedtime bottles 30 minutes earlier than usual last night, they woke up 30 minutes earlier than usual overnight, and they woke up for the day at 8:30am this morning, and they woke up right on time this morning. When I say “right on time,” I mean they let me sleep in an hour, but that’s okay because they had been letting me sleep in by half-an-hour every morning. For the rest of the day they did everything right on schedule, so I’m confident that they’ll be back to letting me sleep in 30 minutes again tomorrow morning.
I feared Abbie would be tougher to shift since she’s older and more set in her ways, like Billy Packer and his love for the ACC except she screams less. We put Abbie to bed at the normal time last night, and obliged by waking up at the normal time this morning, which sounds great except that the hour shift means she slept an hour less than normal last night. She added to her deficit by taking half her normal afternoon nap. This meant she spent tonight acting crankier than a baseball fan forced to sit through a rain delay on opening night, so by the time her newly adjusted bedtime rolled around she was willing to fall asleep whenever we told her to. Fortunately the time change moved her bedtime up by an hour, lessening the amount of time we had to deal with her crankiness. There’s one advantage to the day Daylight Savings Time begins.
* That number is “as many as possible.”
posted by Matt at
10:34 PM
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