Sunday, November 1, 2009

Time -- It's not on our side

In a house where sleep is coveted more than ever before, the end of daylight savings time sounded like a welcome event.
Set the clocks back an hour. Swell idea. An extra hour of sleep for the parents, more rest for the baby. Everyone's happy come Sunday morning, right?
Well...
Turns out that even if you set all of the wall clocks in the house back an hour, the baby's biological clock doesn't spin backward as easily.
We woke up this morning thinking it was 6:30 because that's what the clock said and I had made sure to set the alarm clock back an hour last night. Elise woke up and did fine for the first half hour or so. Then we realized that, no, it in fact was 5:30 a.m. when we got up because somehow the bedroom alarm clock got screwed up, while Elise actually woke up at her normal time, 6:30 a.m., or what would be her normal time if not for the end of daylight savings time, but that meant it was an hour earlier for us.
I still get confused trying to figure this out.
The end result after only a one-hour time change: A baby who spent most of Sunday tired and ticked off, and two exhausted parents who cannot figure out why a one-hour tweak got us all out of whack. (You can scratch the seven-time-zone-spanning family trip to Europe off the list for a few years.)
You know, some states do not recognize daylight savings time. That seemed ridiculous, but after today I'm thinking Minnesota ought to follow suit. And please, let's make that happen before spring, when we otherwise will have to figure out how to set alarm clocks and biological clocks to spring ahead.
I need a nap just thinking about that.

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