Years ago, I used to love "falling back." What was not to love about it? You got an extra hour of sleep! You got an extra hour in your weekend (it almost felt like a vacation)! And for a short period of time, waking up in the morning didn't feel absolutely painful.
Now "falling back" and "springing forward" suck. I wish the government would pick a time and stay with it. As many of you know, adjusting young kids to a new time change is not for the faint-at-heart. This year "falling back" seems to have been particularly painful in our family. We were not only battling the time change but our soon-to-be three year old son simultaneously decided now is the time he wants to start getting out of his bed at night and in the morning.
For two entire years (not exaggerating), we have had the absolutely perfect sleeper in our family. Not once have we gotten up with him in the middle of the night since he was 8 months old. He didn't make a single peep ever. He didn't attempt to get out of his toddler bed. He was perfect. Amazing, right? Well, he's done with that. Now he has discovered he can get out of bed and boy is he interested in all the fun that can come with that.
So once we "fell back," it meant our son was awake at 6 AM and be-bopping out of bed to go wake up his sister. His sister, as I've mentioned many times before, needs sleep more than anything in life to maintain her emotional stability (and hence mom and dad's sanity). This of course, led to sleep deprivation for both kids, which led to a downward spiral of behavior and thus, the chaos began.
Once our daughter becomes sleep deprived, she struggles with controlling her anxiety. That means every time she feels slightly out of control, slightly wronged, or slightly unheard, her anger is level goes sky high. She hasn't had a serious meltdown in months. This past week, we've had 3. I mean the kind where no one in the house can talk, because nothing can be heard except for her. Anxiety and sleep deprivation cause her to wake in the night, so thus, she started waking us up every night. That, of course, leads to sleep deprivation of mom and dad...which is never good. Patience goes down the drain when mom and dad are tired.
Our son isn't significantly better. After all, he's two. So in the past two weeks, we have had a meltdown every morning, because either we won't give him the entire box of _____ (cereal, pancakes, etc.) or we won't let him use the adult scissors to cut ______. And his normal, "No. I do want that" statements have turned into "NOOOOOOOOOO. I DOOOOOOO WANT THAAAAAAT!!!!!!!"
Oh it's been a joy to be in our house. What I can say is this isn't our first rodeo with time changes and yes, we know this too shall pass. The benefit of it getting dark earlier is our kids willingly go to bed earlier and gradually they are sleeping later and gradually, peace will be restored. But man, I just wish Congress (by that I mean the men who probably had wives who dealt with this) could experience a time change with young kids just once and I'm sure they would clearly vote to just pick a time and stick with it!
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