Still Adjusting to the End of Daylight Savings Time

On Sunday my FB newsfeed was flooded with witty status updates and memes about how much the end of Daylight Saving (aka "fall back") stinks when you have little kids. I, like many people, used to love gaining that extra hour of sleep. But as mommies and daddies know, kids don't know what time it is and they don't care if the clocks were changed.
 

 
We have been working all week to get the kids adjusted to the new time. After a busy Sunday, the kids were ready to go to bed at 5:00pm (old 6:00pm). It took a lot of effort to keep them up an extra hour so they wouldn't wake up well before dawn. We have been successful at slowly pushing back bedtime so they are asleep by their normal 7:30. Wake up isn't terrible...my daughter sleeps at least until 6:15 (old 7:15), and my son has generally been sleeping until he hears her stirring if not later.

The kids are not the only ones having a hard time adjusting. I am too. I am thoroughly on the kids' schedule which is set with the sun, not the clock. At 2:00 (old 3:00) the afternoon slump kicks in and I think "it's only 2? It feels like 3." Well, that, of course, is because it was 3:00 when the sun was an this approximate angle just last week. The "when will daddy be home" feeling kicks in for me at 4:00 now (formerly 5:00pm) which means 2 hours that pass very slowly until the new 6:00.

But it's not all bad. On Monday my son woke up to sunshine which made it much easier to motivate him, and the whole family, to get up and have more time together before school and work. In the evening after the kids are asleep my husband and I normally stay up way too late. But the dark and the cold and the transition have enticed me to crawl under the covers much earlier than I normally would, so I am getting some extra sleep after all.