Schedule? What Schedule?

I used to be the biggest fan in the world of the whole "fall back" thing. I mean, who doesn't love getting a whole extra hour of sleep every autumn?

I'll tell you who...

Mothers of young children, THAT'S who!

Eli was formerly the most perfectly scheduled little child. Up between 8 and 9 every morning. Down for a nap at noon. Up again between 2 and 3. Asleep for the night by 7:30pm. Happy, content, non-whiny, full of energy during all his awake hours. Perfectly scheduled, I tell you!

And now? NOW? Now he is up between 6 and 6:15am. By 10:30am he is beside himself with exhaustion and spends the next hour and a half whining, moaning, clinging to my legs, and crying. He takes his afternoon nap, but it is now, for some reason, a good hour shorter than before the time change. We try to push him to his normal bedtime at night and usually make it to about 7pm, but he still wakes up around 6am! What in the world?

So, basically, all the time change did for me was to make my child sleep a good 2 hours less than he used to sleep, than he needs to sleep. And less sleep a very cranky child makes!

Let me just say that I am a fan of this time, this normal old non-daylight-savings time. I like that the sun comes up early and goes down early. But let's just leave it this way, eh? Messing with the clocks twice a year wreaks havoc on small children and their mothers.

Mothers of small children, UNITE! No more time changes!