Daylight Savings Time Approaches!

Daylight savings time approaches. Since the new laws have gone into effect, the date has been moved a few weeks later than it used to be.

We should all set our clocks backward on Saturday night in anticipation of that pesky time change slated to occur in the wee hours of the morning on Sunday.

How will this affect your family? I know that I have been plotting and planning about how to combat the time change and the effect that it will have on my kids.

I used to never worry about time change. When my eldest was little, it never seemed to affect him all that much.

Then again, he wasn't really one of those kids who had to have a schedule, either. Boy have things changed around here!

We first ran into time change problems last year, when the babies were about seven months old. I know, it seems silly, but it really did upset the little ones quite a bit.

An hour to an adult doesn't mean all that much, but when you are internally hard-wired from birth to wake up at a certain time, expect feedings every four hours, and like to know EXACTLY when you will get to take naps, go to bed, and get up each morning, it can get confusing.

To my babies, time change can really rock their world and turn it upside down!

No longer will feedings be predictable, and take place exactly when your tiny bodies are conditioned to be hungry.

And you can forget about being able to be comforted in the idea that bedtime comes conveniently when your body tells you that you are sleepy and that meals always seem to happen just when your tummy is beginning to let you know that it is empty.

Oh no, time change happens, and all of the sudden lunch happens an hour earlier and you really aren't feeling hungry yet (and you just cannot figure out the reason why!)

Then bedtime rolls around, and Mumsy just will NOT allow you to put on your upstairs feet to head to the nursery for beddie-bye time.

You are tired and cranky because in your world, it's 6 o'clock and bedtime. In Mumsy's world, it is really only 5 o'clock and it's dinner time and she honestly expects you to stay nice and AWAKE and agreeable which can really be too much for a baby to understand!

Some children thrive on predictability and become dependant upon it in their little world and the schedule that seems to drive it so well.

When the adults spring time change on them, their world can quickly become confusing and to a baby or a toddler, it can be truly upsetting.

So this year, in an attempt to be on top of things, I tried to plan ahead and start conditioning them to "Stay up later" in some attempt to keep my tiny trio's world a little more sane and organized for them.

I am hoping to avoid some meltdowns by keeping them up about an hour later each night the entire week prior to the BIG DAY when we roll those clocks back an hour.

Unfortunately, trying to organize time-change and prepare for it, has been leading to some major meltdowns at my house!

Tonight, to try and distract the babies from it, we all put on our pajama's, donned our new, very cool peter pan denim jackets over our pajama's and a pair of socks, and loaded everybody up into the stroller for a trip to the Pumpkin Shine at the park.

The distraction actually worked, for a time. They made it until about half past six before Vivienne and Kian figured out that it was getting dark out, and that usually they are in bed before this happens.

In typical toddler fashion, some screeching ensued. I had sort of half expected this to happen at some point, and had basically figured on the noise from the masses being loud enough to actually drown out the screeching, wailing babies.

It almost worked, too. But of course everyone within a few feet of us could hear them make their presence known. EVERYONE soon was quite aware of the injustice that I had imposed upon my kids!

We did manage to make it home in one piece, and without too much fan-fare. They were loud, but the people and the traffic were quite a bit louder!

Bregon and I managed to get everyone inside, changed and up to the nursery fairly quickly. The babies even had quieted down once we were home and seemed to be comforted somewhat by the idea that bedtime was imminent!

I had thought that they were really all settling down and going to sleep, until we sat down to have a bit of dinner.

Then, Vivienne let loose her "Banshee howl" that she has mastered over the past few days. It's so high pitched, that I marvel that she has yet to break glass with it yet!

I have just now gotten her calmed down enough to get her back to bed without waking her brothers up, and it's almost ten o'clock.

We have five more days of this new routine before time change takes affect. Hopefully, by then, the babies will all be used to it and won't really notice anything all that different this year!