Just a few of the reasons why I dislike the time change, especially the “Spring Ahead” version:

1.   LOSING AN HOUR OF SLEEP

2.  Mechanical clocks can be reset, kids’ internal clocks cannot.  I will lose an hour of sleep, and my kids will still wake up at the same time, which doesn’t bode well for the “fall back” version of the clock change.  In the spring, the kids will still want to go to bed at the same time, no matter what the clock says –  see #2.

3.  Normally I would like having the sun out later into the evening, but with 4 kids who don’t want to go to bed until it’s dark, the old go-to-bed reply, “but it’s not dark out yet” can actually make sense until 10pm where we live.  I both like having daylight until 10pm in the summer and dislike it at the same time – a conundrum for now, maybe something I’ll like better when my kids get older.

4.  LOSING AN HOUR OF SLEEP (that hour is so precious, it’s on here twice)

5.  There is a HUGE difference between 9:45pm and 10:45pm that I wouldn’t have noticed if not for the time change tonight.  At 9:45, the night was young, I had time for my shower, some laundry, and maybe a quick tv show or two to watch with Hubby before bed.  But before getting into the shower, I changed the clocks, and suddenly it was 10:45.  Suddenly there is only time for the shower and maybe a quick load of laundry before getting to bed too late to really feel good tomorrow anyway.  And no kid-free time with Hubby because (see #2).  🙁

6.  LOSING THAT HOUR OF SLEEP (so important, it needs to end the list)

Don’t forget to set your clocks ahead one hour everyone, and forgive me if I chuckle at those of you who show up late to church tomorrow – maybe it will help me feel better about my tiredness!!  🙂

It seems like I haven’t had the time to blog as much as I’d like to lately.  Put it this way –  Halloween ended over a week ago now, and I still have a draft sitting here detailing how my family spent what’s probably our 2nd favorite holiday.  I think I will quickly summarize and get it churned out next, hopefully.

One thing that’s been taking up my blogging time is laundry.  When the seasons change, my laundry responsibilities increase from about 3 loads per week to 6 or 7.  That’s because my family of 6 is now wearing pants instead of shorts or sundresses, many of us dress in layers in the fall which adds sweatshirts to the mix, and then there are the added number of blankies that the kids use when it turns cold outside.  The good news of all this is that when spring turns to summer, I find myself with about half the laundry I’ve gotten used to doing in the winter – kind of a fall back, spring ahead-type thing for laundry, I guess.  But more laundry folding and less blogging for me in the mean time.

And that reminds me, a funny thing happened at church yesterday.  When my class got back to our classroom after large group, there were 2 new kids sitting there.  I introduced myself, and we were just getting started when their dad came to the door, seemingly embarrassed and very apologetic as he asked for his kids back – turns out their family had forgotten to set their clocks back  an hour, so they were actually there for the next service 🙂

Our family remembered to change our clocks, but we didn’t get to appreciate the extra hour of sleep it was supposed to bring – kids have biological clocks, they wake up at the same time every day regardless of what the clock says or what time zone they are in.  This is especially good advice if you’re going to travel with kids across time zones – don’t fool yourself into thinking that your kids will adjust to the local time when you travel, or you could be in for a not-so-pleasant surprise.  My wonderful, thoughtful husband is always the one who gets up early with the kids, but I had to be at church at 8:30 yesterday.  Also, I was up all night with a killer headache – now that was strange.

I am very lucky to be able to say that I very rarely get headaches.  If I don’t get enough sleep, I will have a dull ringing in my head, but nothing like Saturday night’s doozy that was actually waking me up throughout the night.  Luckily it went away (with help) before I arrived in my classroom full of 1st graders.  But I have to wonder about the cause of this colossal headache – could it perhaps be some kind of weird virus that had me laid up all weekend?  Saturday I was knocked flat on my back by a sudden and severe mysterious back pain.  It began on Friday, when I decided to take my kids to the zoo since they had a day off school.  By the time we were ready to leave, I couldn’t bend over and had to ask for help to tie my shoes.  I thought maybe it was a pulled muscle or something, maybe a cramp that would work itself out – I couldn’t remember injuring it.  But I did not enjoy myself nearly as much as I usually do at the zoo 🙁  And thank goodness Hubby decided to  come with or I don’t know how I would have been able to handle 5 kids (my daughter’s friend came along) by myself without hardly being able to bend or move right.  When we got home, Hubby had some work to catch up on, and I fell asleep on the couch while waiting for him – something I haven’t done for ages which makes me realize that I didn’t feel too well on Friday.  Then Saturday dawns, and I can’t get out of bed because of the extreme pain every time I tried to bend.  So I stayed in bed until 1:30 – played my cards right and got lunch in bed too 🙂 – when we absolutely had to leave to meet our youth group kids for a service project.  I got the easy job – waiting for the kids who were late – while the others raked leaves and picked up litter, and while I took it easy, my back started to feel better.  But then came the headache which was to plague me all night.  What makes me think this is a virus is because of all the stuff going around lately, plus the fact that my sister had this same exact sudden backache a few weeks ago – could it be a contagious ‘backache virus’?  I owed my parents an email, but I couldn’t get in front of the computer with my sore back, so I called them from bed Saturday morning, and that’s how I found out about my sister.  Anyway, my point is, it was a busy weekend, but also one where I couldn’t get to my computer even if I had had the time, hence the slow pace of the blogging.

And speaking of things going around…  my parakeet JJ is feeling much better.  He’s even chirping again!!  He hasn’t lost his balance while sitting on his perch in days, and his physical appearance is starting to look healthier.  The lady at the pet store said that if a little bird is fluffed up and at the bottom of his cage like JJ was that it’s almost always too late to save them, so I feel really great that my little guy seems to have another chance.  I guess I should have bought this really cool looking toy I saw the other day, but my husband and I have a policy that we try not to buy anything unless we have an immediate use for it.  This thing was a $10 cabinet – you install it in your living room or somewhere; it’s a nice looking wood cabinet, and it opens into a little play yard for small birds.  Ugh, just writing about it makes me want it, but the store was an hour away, and JJ is a cage bird – I don’t know that he would come out to play in a play yard.  I think of him as so fragile, so it would be difficult for me to make him come out; I sure wouldn’t want him to get sick again.

Well, anyway, I’ve rambled enough – guess I just wanted to share my relief at getting well and of being able to blog again.  Until that overdue Halloween post…

Tonight is the night we change our clocks for Daylight Savings Time.  I guess we’re ending Daylight Savings – or maybe we’re starting it.  I don’t know and I don’t really care.  All I know is that I will be losing an hour of sleep.  Ok, it’s not THAT bad; I do like when the sun stays out later, although there is no sun in the weather forecast for the next few days…  But I loathe the idea of losing a precious hour of sleep.  If I remember correctly, the time change throws the kids into a tizzy for a few days every year until their bodies readjust – something else to look forward to.

So anyway, this should serve as your reminder to change those clocks – no excuses about being late to church or theater meetings tomorrow!  And yes, you must flip the clocks forward, not backward.  Remember, it’s SPRING ahead, FALL back.  And try not to fret about losing that hour of sleep.  As Jay Leno said last night referring to this horrible economy that only seems to  be getting worse:

“After losing your job, your 401K, and your house, losing an hour of sleep seems like nothing!”

It’s been over a week since we’ve been in NW Ohio, and really, not much has changed.  There are many less leaves on the trees than there were when we left for Disney World last Friday, but other than that…  We haven’t yet had a chance to check in with friends, so hopefully all is well everywhere.  I have to admit that I was a bit scarred from our last vacation – we returned to the horrible news that my beloved kitty had passed away.  So this time, I was nervous about coming home.  I told our pet-sitter that if anyone dies this time to not tell us while we were in Florida, thinking, what good would that do…  but that decision ended up backfiring majorly because then the whole time I was worried that something had happened and I didn’t know about it becuase I had left the instructions not to call us…  But nothing catastrophic occurred, at least not to us or any of our pets, and we had a wonderful time.  Now more than ever I know what people mean when they say that they need a vacation from their vacation.  After taking 4 little kids on a 1,000+ mile road trip each way and returning with the trashed car and the dirty laundry and housekeeping catch-up for a family of 6, I could really use a vacaion!

Oh well…  we had a great time and I wouldn’t trade our experiences for the world – or all the laundry in the world.  More to come about the trip after I unpack some and get used to the fact that I did not gain an extra hour this weekend like Jill my GPS friend told me I had – guess she (along with my alarm clock – glad I noticed that before tomorrow morning) is pre-programmed for the “fall back” switch for daylight savings time.  The only problem is that Jill and my alarm clock were programmed before the daylight savings hours were adjusted thanks to President Bush.  So they are now an hour behind…  but no matter, they can stay that way for another week or two, whenever we change the clocks…  and then, I will get my extra hour of sleep – always fun!

No one likes to lose an hour of sleep.  Usually I take it as it comes, however, because I do enjoy the extra hour of daylight.  This year is another story.  The kids have NOT adjusted well to the time change AT ALL!  My oldest, an 8-year-old, comes into our bedroom EVERY morning and whispers, “Dad…  Dad…  DAD…  Is there a delay?”  This is partially the school districts fault.  For awhile, we were having 2-hour school delays due to weather at least weekly.  So now, she can’t get used to the fact that the weather is finally nice enough to start school on time.  Either that, or the district is sick of the heat of all the missed school and won’t delay anymore…  But much of it is because of the time change; my daughter just wants there to be a delay so she can go back to sleep for an hour or two.

My 3-year-old is back to staying up later than us.  She has always been a toughie to get on a proper sleep schedule, and wouldn’t you know it, we had her in an awesome sleeping groove until this darned time change happened.  She is back to refusing to go to bed, and she is a crabby zombie in the mornings.  The other night, she was sneaking peeks as we tried to watch Poltergeist in the living room – THAT’LL get her right to sleep!  That movie scared me awake for years – that clown part is STILL scary!

The baby – actually, she is now an almost 17-month-old toddler – is the most affected.  She cannot fall asleep before 10 at night, and she actually sleeps in a little bit in the mornings, kind of.  She’ll wake up at 5 or 6, then fall back asleep when Dad lays on the floor with her – poor Dad!  Have you noticed a trend?  They go to Dad when it comes to sleep issues – they KNOW better than to mess around with me – I get kinda grumpy when I don’t sleep well.  Unfortunately, the pregnancy has made me a light sleeper so I get woken up anyway.

Something tells me we’ll get it all worked out, but then we will just have to change the clocks back an hour the very weekend the kids finally adjust, starting all over again!