The Clock Changed and Nobody Told the Kids

We fell back an hour this weekend, which in mom math should mean an extra hour of sleep. Ha. Ha ha ha. Nobody told the kids.

My body woke up at what felt like the middle of the night, convinced it was already time to make breakfast, find a missing shoe, and referee an argument about who got the good cereal bowl. The clock on the wall said one thing. The clock in my kids said something completely different, and their clock is louder.

By 7 a.m. — or 6 a.m., or whatever time it actually was, I stopped checking — the house was already at full volume. Somebody was hungry. Somebody else was suddenly very interested in a craft project that involves glitter, which is a word that should come with a warning label on a Monday morning. The dog was staring at me like I had personally moved dinner time, which, technically, I guess society did.

Here's the thing nobody warns you about with six kids and a time change: you don't get one extra hour. You get one extra hour of being awake while everyone else figures out what time it is. It's like jet lag, except nobody went anywhere fun and there's still laundry.

So I did what I could. I got everybody fed, dressed, and mostly out the door with their shoes on the correct feet, which I am counting as a win. I lowered my standards to "alive, clothed, and kind of on time" and honestly? That felt like freedom.

My payoff came after bedtime, when the house finally went quiet and the clocks could argue among themselves. I stepped out onto the porch for a little exhale — just me, my mommy's magic flowers, and the glorious silence of nobody asking me for anything. The extra hour finally showed up. It was just waiting until the kids were asleep, like all good things do.

Mamas, did the time change help you at all, or are your kids also running on a clock that doesn't exist?