Ok, so I didn’t intend on sharing this today, but since some of you asked how to normalize life after daylight savings time with little ones, I’ll tell you what I did this weekend which has worked for us since 2015. I am not an expert by any means, however, this trick has saved us from any wild 5am wake up calls.
Here is how I get my kids back on schedule after daylight savings:
For reference, my oldest son Bear is 3.5 years old and my soon to be middle child Luke (sob) is 1.5 years old and I am expecting my third March 1. I really can’t afford to lose sleep at 23 weeks so I went back to old faithful. It sounds simple, but since daylight savings always falls on a Sunday morning at 2AM, we keep our kids up past their usual bedtime. Typically, they go to bed between 7:30 and 8pm. In order to get them to sleep through the extra hour, we don’t just let them stay up, we get them pretty lit until they’re exhausted. This past Saturday, we went on our first date since September to see Bohemian Rhapsody (I’m a Queen superfan) and go out to dinner. When we realized how long it had been over our main course we laughed at ourselves and were mildly horrified, but I will take the blame on this one since this pregnancy has made me one tired old lady who prefers my bed above anywhere else as soon as the sun goes down.
Anyway, we told our babysitter to let the boys watch a movie after they finished dinner, and we got home as the Frozen credits rolled. We then spent 1.5 hours playing cars and “getchoo” which just entails running after the boys until they laugh themselves silly. They went to bed almost 2 hours after their regular bedtime. The next morning, Luke slept until his normal weekend wakeup around 7:30, and Bear, who is aptly named because he literally sleeps like a bear as the saying goes, slept until almost 8:30 (which happens some weekends). It was as if daylight savings never happened, and we pretended for the rest of the day that it didn’t and put them down for naptime and bedtime at the regular times. I don’t want to jinx myself for tomorrow morning, but if this method works as it has in the past, all should be back to normal tomorrow. I on the other hand feel as though it’s 2am as I finish typing this at 9:58 pm. Pregnancy problems.
It’s not too late to try this if you suddenly have a little one waking at the crack of dawn. Wishing you luck and a smooth daylight savings transition.
xo
BB
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