Fall Back (Into Bed)

Last week we experienced the cruel semi-annual tradition of a daylight savings time change.  Being from AZ I really don't understand why we do this.  I think it has something to do with when we were an agricultural society, but I don't think it is worth my time in a Google search to find out for sure.  What I do know is that for those of us with children, it is a cruel social experiment about what happens when you mess with the very fragile internal clock of a young child.

This time we "gained" an hour.  It sounds really nice, but what it actually means for those of us with children is that they will go to bed at their normal time, be unaware that they have an extra hour that they could devote to precious sleep, and wake up at the crack of dawn.  Meanwhile, us foolish parents thinking we get an extra hour decide stay up a bit later than normal.  This is a HUGE mistake because what inevitably follow is weeks of a poor, disrupted sleep routine.

How all of this shook out for us this week is that last Sunday both children were awake at 5:45 (that is AM people!!!).  Over the week Merrick has slowly crept closer to his normal wake up time of about 6:45, but CC who typically has to be woken up when we leave the house at 7:40 has only slept past 7 twice and has been up before 6 more times than I care to think about.  As a result she is falling asleep in the car at 9:00 AM and then refusing to take a real nap later.

We struggle with sleep enough as it is in this family and could really do without this added nonsense.  Maybe instead of researching the origins of daylight savings time, I will dedicate that time to research what is takes to get something on the ballot and try to vote daylight savings time out of existence.