Daylight Savings, Alya, and Chocolate Syrup

If you know me, you know that I hate Daylight Savings Time more than many things. It did serve a purpose at one point, but I feel that it's completely worthless to screw-up people's schedules for that "extra hour of daylight" at the end of the day.

So yoou want an extra hour daylight, go to work an hour early. Seriously. But making me do it with you is just unfair.

And no, I really hated it when our elected officials decided that extending daylight savings would be a good idea. I wanted my freakin' sleep patterns at a reasonable pace for half the year - not 4 months. Just make it year round then. Seriously.

Last year, I was really concerned on it's effect on Alya. Marcus was only a few months then, so it had little impact on his life. But Alya was a little unsettled by that transition last year. Another reason for the hate.

This past Sunday, the dreaded-evil-designed-by-the-marquee-de-sade Daylight Savings struck. And Alya was up until 10:30 that night. Now that is late for my little squirrel. Plus, she was on a Mommy-at-bedtime kick, so that didn't help matter.

Monday, Sasha had to wake Alya up in the morning in order to get to work on time. This has been a 7 AM work week for me - which has been painful. "Thanks, Daylight Savings!" [Please replace the word "Thanks" with your personal, favorite explicative.]

That night was a 11:30 PM night, with lots of false starts for sleep time. Frustrating.

Tuesday, was a case of "second verse, same as the first." Except I went out after work, so I only got the info when I talked to Sasha around 9 PM and Alya was still not down yet. When I came home, I noticed in the sink a dirty bowl that had previously contained ice cream and chocolate syrup. I can understand that, especially since Sasha spent a lot of time trying to get her to go to sleep.

But then she realized that Alya was just plain not tired. Sasha stopped trying to fight the bedtime fight and let it roll.

Armed with the knowledge of the previous night, I had Alya and followed Sasha's style to let Alya go to bed when she was ready. Which meant I was closing the door to her room at 9:15.

And as I closed the door to my sleeping daughter's room, it came to me that this is a good thing. Alya's sleep patterns have changed, but Daylight Savings has resulted in me having more than two hours with my daughter after work.

It used to be that both kids were tired as dirt when we picked them up at 5 PM. So, it was annoying to only see them for two hours before they went to bed. And much of that time was spent on dinner and baths if needed. Although we admittedly enjoyed having a few hours for ourselves.

Now we get to see Alya for an evening. Twice as long as previous. Plus, Alya is not completely wiped out. She was ready to enjoy being home.

I guess Daylight Savings did something good after all. And I'm quite happy with that result.

And yes, I did have that bowl of ice cream (lactose free!) and chocolate syrup, too.

Be seeing you,

Jon