November 6, 2011 by Sarah
Those of you reading this in the USA will be “falling back” as daylight savings time comes to an end. We thought you were doing that last week. The Moscow in Your Pocket guidebook said so. And to make it official, our iphones which think everyone is an American took care of the time change for us.
But we didn’t know the phones would change. And we use them as alarm clocks. And middle-of-the-night clocks. You know, to check the time to see if it’s ok for the baby to wake up and nurse or if we need to tell her to go back to sleep.
We begin the day with Travis. He is with Helen and Sadie, (in their bed, since ours wasn’t here yet and we were camping out in the kids’ beds. For 6 weeks. I do not recommend this, no matter how much you love your kids or how committed you are to the family bed and/or attachment parenting. And I can’t sleep with Helen or she’ll want to nurse all night long and we don’t do that anymore. Hallelulah!).
Anyway. Helen wakes up and is really restless. Travis looks at his iphone for the time.
It says it is 4:30– actual time 5:30– too early to bring her in for a nursing. Eventually she settles back down. He looks at his watch. It says it is 6:00. (See, he thinks he’s been dealing with her for an hour and a half but really it’s only been 30 minutes. This is important for later.)
She sleeps. We all sleep.
She wakes up again- he looks at his watch and sees it is almost 7 so he brings her downstairs to me to nurse. But when they come in, I look at my iphone and see it is only 5:56. I think, why on earth is he bringing her in here so early? Now how am I supposed to be a happy person if I get shorted my sleep for an hour? I might have thought a whole bunch of other things that were not nice, but that will not be repeated here. I am sure all the mommies know what some of those things were.
In the meantime, he goes back to lay down and get more sleep on the couch. (We are SUPER DUPER excited to have our bed back now, this musical bed business is totally crazy.)
While Helen is nursing, Thomas gets up. I am thinking it is 6:20 and tell him it is too early to get up, but if he feels like he wants to that is fine. He likes to read in the mornings while it is still quiet. After Helen nurses she is ready to get up. I am majorly bummed, because I think it is only 6:30, and I really don’t want to get up that early. So I go get Travis so he can take care of feeding her breakfast and changing her diaper.*
But Travis tells me he is really tired and wants to go back to bed. Fine, I tell him. And from somewhere deep inside I get some coffee made, feed the kiddos breakfast start some laundry and prep for lunch and I am feeling like SuperMom. Now, remember, this whole time I am thinking it’s about 6:30-7ish. Then I look at the clock on the stove and it says it’s 8:20. What!?!!
So I ask Thomas, “What time did you get up?”
He answers, “7:20,” in that “duh” kind of voice that 10 year-olds have mastered.
hmm.
I go find my iphone which is still on the bed, tucked under the pillow. It says 7:22.
Stupid stupid iphone!!! Here you think you need to be changing time as if you’re in the states. Don’t you know we’re in Russia! They aren’t even participating in Daylight Savings Time anymore…. ugh.
Our plan was to be getting our coats and gear on at 9:45 so that we could have enough time to walk, metro, walk to the place where there was a Protestant worship service. It was the same place we had tried to go to the previous week, but hadn’t because we had gotten lost. Like, 3 hours walking around lost. And yes, we had a map. And yes, we had asked for directions. Twice.
So I go running up the stairs to get Travis up in hopes that maybe we could get ourselves and the kids ready in a mere hour and 15 minutes.
I ever-so-sweetly tell him it’s time to wake up. And he looks at his iphone and gets all grumpy with me. See, he’s thinking I let him sleep for 10 minutes. He’s thinking I’m some kind of mean and selfish wife and maybe something along the lines of Why is she waking me up? I’m tired. How am I supposed to be happy today with NO SLEEP? Actually, he was probably much nicer to me in his thoughts that I was to him in mine.
Anyway.
I realize after a few seconds what’s going on and why he is so resistant to my perfect lovingkindness.
I say, “I bet you think you’ve only slept for 10 minutes.”
“Yea, what do you need?”
“You’ve been sleeping for an hour. It’s 8:30 and we need to get ready for church. Our phones think it was fall back for daylight savings.”
He looks at his phone. He looks at his watch. “Stupid iphone.”
Of course, we missed church. Again. We really tried to get us all ready, but it just takes longer than what we’re accustomed to. See, in Houston you can wear sandals and a sundress or even jeans to church. You can leave your hair wet– it’ll be dry by the time you get there. And dressing a baby for cold weather? Well, that is probably story enough for another day.
I figured I’d relay this madness to you all today, since you finally fell back in time.
*Wow, this account really makes me look bad. Look people, I am not a morning person. I do not just pop up like most of the people in my house. I am slow to wake up, and we all know it.