Seton Baby Talk

Daylight savings is the bane of my existence. It has become quite apparent in the last few days that daylight savings was a device not to create more daylight, but to give the moms and dads of the world another reason to go gray prematurely or just pull out their hair entirely.

Sleep schedules are a huge deal to parents. Getting your child on a regular routine and sleep schedule is the holy grail of parenting. When you figure out the timing of putting down your infant and having them sleep through the night resulting in more than four hours of uninterrupted sleep for you, it’s like the universe is back in color again. Sleep glorious sleep! There’s just never enough it seems and new parents could always use more!

We have Owen on a pretty nice schedule. He goes down to bed at 8:00 p.m. and doesn’t wake up until about 7 a.m. It gives me a little bit of “me time” before bed, and still allows me time to get some much needed sleep as well.

Cue spring forward daylight savings time. In the past week, I’ve had a child that cannot manage to get to sleep until 10:00 p.m. on some days. Then he won’t wake up in the mornings or wakes up on the wrong side of the bed. I’ve been late to work twice, have dealt with a cranky toddler, and have been overly annoyed by the fact that just changing the time one MEASLY hour has completely upset the balance of the universe. The dark side of the force has entered our household, because the light has entered outdoors.

We’re working on getting back on schedule. Last night at 8:00 p.m., which is normally bedtime for Owen, he was running around the house naked, being chased by me in an attempt to get him in a diaper and his pajamas after bath time. He wanted to play, “I’m gonna get you!” and not unlike a dog that is running wild after having a bath, he was on FIRE. I promise I don’t feed my child massive quantities of sugar, but you wouldn’t know it by the show Owen put on last night. Giggling and running and screaming and playing, and the time was creeping up. It was 8:30 by the time I had him wrangled and into bed, where he was wrestling with me to get back out and start the chase game over again. There were tears at bedtime which we haven’t had in months. He refused to let me leave. He wanted to get up out of bed and I had to fight him tooth and nail, and he FINALLY crashed at 10:00 p.m. Once again, we were foiled by daylight savings.

Once again this morning we were slow to rise although the sun was up and at ‘em by the time we needed to be up and at ‘em as well. Owen was sleeping soundly and I had to wake him up bribed by the wonderful world of The Wiggles. The song “Wake up Jeff” has become the mantra of the house, with “Jeff” replaced with “Owen”. I managed to get us out of the door on time this morning , although without breakfast. Owen is staying with his previous sitter, Miss Joan, during spring break, and I knew she would feed him oatmeal, his favorite, because I couldn’t manage to get us up and running in time to get it taken care of.

So the battle is back on tonight. We’re going to kick this Daylight Savings Change in the rear and get us all back on schedule. Owen will be IN BED at 8:00 like usual and hopefully asleep by 8:30. It’s got to get better and get back to normal again eventually right? Probably, just in time for the time to change on us once again.