Spring forward…three weeks later

A few months ago I griped about the Fall-back time change. The early afternoon darkness exacerbated the witching hour and it took us many weeks to readjust our routine. Today, I am going to gripe about Spring-forward… yes, we are still feeling the effects of the time change.

The wonderful, early bedtime that we finally achieved in order to cope with Fall-back has been compromised. When it was dark at 5pm, it could be whatever time Dave and I said it was. 5:57? Bedtime! With the darkness backing us up, the kids had no way to prove us wrong (especially since they can't tell time). But now Katherine and Clara eye us suspiciously as we try to convince them at 6:30 that it is already past their bedtime, and Alexandra pulls up the window shade as if to show us it is clearly not bedtime. It’s fun to listen to them chatter away and sing each other lullabies until their room is dark enough that they’re able to give in to their exhaustion, but by then it really is past their bedtime.

On top of the too-late bedtime problem, the extra hour of evening light also means we’ve lost our morning light. I rely on morning light to get them out of bed. Like me, they are not morning people, except on Sundays and school holidays, when they consistently wake up on their own at 6:30am. On school days, if it is dark out, they don’t want to get up – even with a 5:57pm bedtime.  During the winter months, I have to drag them out of bed. We were just getting to the point of enough morning light that 7am wasn’t torture for them. Now Spring-forward has set us back again.

I know this problem will resolve itself as the days get longer and the weather gets better. Kids who spend hours outside running free, climbing trees, and riding bikes are exhausted by 5:57pm no matter how bright it is; kids who are sick and tired of slipping around on an icy driveway and sinking into three feet of old, dirty snow in 12-degree weather are not. But for these weeks in between Spring Forward and better weather, the time change is brutal.