Turn and Face the Strange Changes

Without even looking back through the archives, I’m certain I’ve written about this before. In fact, I’m certain I wrote about this almost a year ago: daylight savings.

As a boy, there was nothing sweeter than daylight savings time. The extra hour to play in the evenings was golden, and as the days grew longer as spring stretched into summer, it wasn’t unusual for our baseball games to last until past eight o’clock. It was a beautiful, beautiful thing...

Now, though, it sucks.

Our typical evening schedule has always looked like this:

5:30 -- Dinner
6:00 -- Shower for Alison, bath for Henry and Kate
6:30 -- Thirty minutes of (hopefully) calm relaxation
7:00 -- Bedtime for Kate
7:01 -- Homework for Alison and Henry
7:45 -- Brushing teeth, complaining about bedtime
8:00 -- Bedtime story for Henry
8:15 -- Bedtime story for Alison
8:30 -- Free at last, free at last, thank god almighty, we are free at last!

Now things are so turned around that we finished dinner tonight at 6:45. The kids had been playing outside all afternoon (it really doesn’t help things that it’s been absolutely gorgeous the last couple days, between eighty and ninety degrees), so they were completely filthy. No way we could skip the bath tonight.

First I gave Kate a quick bath, put her in her pajamas, and blew her hair dry, all of which convinced her it was time for bed even if the sun was still shining. She would stay awake in her crib for the next thirty or forty minutes, but it hardly mattered. One down.

Next I bathed Henry while Alison took a shower. By the time they were both clean and in their pajamas it was already 7:45. They both got to the kitchen table the second I finished clearing the dinner dishes away, Alison with her homework, Henry with his pre-K cutting practice. (This book is excellent, by the way. Great for helping out a small boy’s small motor skills. Here's the link.)

I hoped that Alison’s homework would be light, but guess what? FOUR FUCKING PAGES of math, in preparation for tomorrow’s math test. Nice.

So we slogged through addition and subtraction, counted money, reviewed her calendar, and practiced telling time while Henry did a nifty job of cutting out a coiling snake and a few soccer balls. Henry finished early and actually went to his room on his own to wait for tucking (“Books, Daddy?” he asked. “No, we’ll read tomorrow night.”), but Alison’s work dragged on until 8:45.

As I walked her to her room, she said to me, “Daddy, we really need to read tonight. The principal says we have to read every night.” What I really wanted to say was that the principal obviously had no idea what she was talking about, but instead I promised that we’d read tomorrow, knowing full well that we might not. Perhaps we’ll read again in October, after the clock has fallen back to where it should be.

Comments

[David]

Another wonderful story. I'm always delighted to come home every evening to my kids but within the space of an hour I'm wondering if they are ever, ever, finally going to go to bed. Free at last, indeed.

[Keith]

I feel your pain. Nice, long, sunny days are fine for kids, crappy for us. Last week I was playing with my boy in the yard while my wife was working late. She told me to feed him early and get him ready for bed. We played and played, and the sun was still shining brightly. By the time I realized it was 7pm, the wife was home and I had screwed up the evening. And yes, the principal is right, we should read to our kids every night, but sometimes life gets in the way!

[L.A. Daddy]

It hasn't been too bad for us. But then, there's only one little one in the house right now. She does want to go outside now - after dinner - but I can usually distract her with shiny sparkley things. For now.

[Homemom3]

Wow, sounds like my house. Oh I know what you mean about the PAGES they have to do and then they want us to read to them and them to read to us. Yeah, that doesn't always happen on our schedule.

Oh have you heard some schools want to try keeping the kids for an hour longer. I hope that doesn't happen, I can only imagine schedules then.