It Pays to Spring Forward!

Hubby and I are hoping that his genius, coupled with my monetary bribes, will get us some sleep tomorrow morning. As we all know (or maybe not, so you are finding out now) we have to turn the clocks ahead one hour tonight, so everyone loses an hour of sleep. For parents of children that think they are roosters and must wake up the whole freaking farm at the crack of dawn, daylight savings sucks.

Monkey Man has been getting up at about 6 a.m. every morning. He doesn’t care if it’s a school day or a weekend, he is up and at ‘em. His motto is that of a hardcore, 20-something rockstar, “I’ll sleep when I’m dead.” He’s got too much to accomplish in a day, why sleep away the hours that could be devoted to Wii Lego Batman, Spongebob, writing and illustrating books, playing basketball, jumping on the trampline, doing flips in the living room, and just generally exhausting his mother and father?

The past few weekends, I have offered to pay Monkey Man $1 if he lets us sleep in until 8 a.m. He will do anything for money – he is saving for an iTouch and a car (gotta give the kid some credit on the short and long-term financial goals – Suze Orman would be proud). Between his birthday, allowance and weekly extortion from his one set of grandparents (my sweet and growing ever-poorer parents) he is almost about to get an iTouch. He has wanted one for months now, and we refuse to buy him one. But if this is what he chooses to spend his hard-earned money on, then so be it.

Now we pair my bribery with Hubby’s sinister and truly brilliant plan to allow us to sleep in tomorrow morning. Hubby approached me after Monkey Man was safely into slumber and said, “Let’s not turn the clocks ahead tonight. We’ll wait until after Monkey Man wakes up. So when he gets up at his usual 6 a.m., it will really be 7 a.m. One of us will get up and get him breakfast, then we can sleep until the clock says 8:30, and it will really be 9:30!” He was practically peeing himself with glee and pride at this revelation.

If this works, we may never have a clock in this house that works again!