A lovely way to start a post, right?
Sorry about that.
I can't stand Daylight Savings Time. I don't want to lose an hour of sleep on Saturday night. I don't want to spend Sunday searching for all of my clocks' manuals in order to figure out how to change their times. (Actually, I never changed the clock in our office last fall, so this spring I had one less clock to change. Score!) I don't want to arrive late to church, or to feel like I'm "behind" as we move through our Sunday activities and chores. I don't want to wake up under the cover of darkness on Monday morning. And more than anything, I don't want to walk Will to school before the sun has crested the horizon. It's just mean to send kids to school when it's still dark outside.
Did you know there is a 10% increase in heart attacks on the Monday and Tuesday following our shift to Daylight Savings Time? Maybe we should listen to our bodies - and follow the lead of states like Arizona and Hawaii that don't observe Daylight Savings Time - and stop setting ourselves up for sleep deprivation, decreased immune function, and out-of-whack circadian rhythms...
(source)
So, how does one motivate oneself to get out of bed on a morning like this one?
For Will, Sports Center does the trick. Tom and I granted Will permission to watch Sports Center in the mornings once he's completely ready for school. After waking up on his own at 6:30am, he gets dressed, makes his bed, tidies up his room, makes his own breakfast, puts his dishes in the dishwasher, and brushes his teeth. Then he runs - yes, runs (I can hear him cruising through the house while I still lay in bed) - to the playroom and settles into the giant beanbag chair to catch up on the sports-related happenings of the night before. We've had absolutely no problems getting him up and out the door for school on time since we implemented the Sports Center policy. (In fact, on the morning the policy went into effect, I found Will completely ready for school and watching Sports Center at…5:25am. We had to amend the policy to add a "you may not get out of bed before 6:25am or exit your room before 6:30am" clause.)
For Hallie, the promise of beautiful hair pulls her out of bed and keeps her moving. A couple of weeks ago she asked me to style her hair like Elsa and Anna from Frozen, and I agreed, if she was ready to WALK OUT THE DOOR ("ready" and "ready to walk out the door" are two completely different states of being in Hallie's mind) with 20 minutes to spare. Sure enough, Hallie turned on her own alarm clock each evening and got out of bed when it went off each morning. And because she upheld her end of the deal, I had to uphold mine. My fingers were sore - and Google Images had been given quite the workout - by the time we worked our way through the four Frozen hairstyles Hallie wanted to try.
Early Elsa
I'm quite proud of this hairstyle - perhaps my best work in the series.
Late Elsa
These pictures make this hairstyle look like a hot mess, but I swear it
wasn't when Hallie left for school. I forgot to take pictures that morning,
so these were taken after school and after she'd changed clothes twice.
Early Anna
This hairstyle was by far the hardest of the four
because of the texture and length of Hallie's hair.
Late Anna
It was nice to end on a hairstyle with which I'm familiar!
For me, there is no magic motivator. Well, I take that back. It's coffee. Just coffee.
How many days until we "fall back"?
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