Changing of the Clocks Ritual

Just over a week ago we turned the clocks ahead one hour to Daylight Saving Time, which, like every other year, has turned into a month long event. Why on God’s green earth do I have so many darn clocks??? (Why is it called God’s green earth anyhow, since the planet looks blue from space and the term ‘earthy tones’ generally refers to various shades of brown)? Now where was I? Ah yes! These time changes, other than being very annoying, do not affect our lives much at all. Sure, we enjoy the couple of months when we actually get to see the sun before and after work, but overall DST makes little difference to our daily life.

These time changes do take some time getting used to however, as we try to go to bed at our usual time only to stare blankly at the ceiling cursing the person who thought they could manipulate time and all the other people who agreed. The length of this adjustment period differs from person to person. I recently learned that not everyone suffers from DST fatigue, some people, as small as they may be, seem to be able to just ignore the time change altogether. That is right, baby my son has completely ignored the changing of the clocks ritual and has continued on his regular routine.

I have long since given up the effort of ignoring the time change so I adjusted my schedule immediately and continued to feed my son at his regular time intervals and he continued to eat, although not as much. I did find it odd that my son was not eating as much as normal but it was not until Friday, two frustrating days after my son started rejecting his food outright, that I realized why he was not eating. His body runs solely on its internal clock and not some abstract methodology like time. By not acknowledging the time change, my son has given me an extra hour of sleep each night and, since he does not eat dinner until after seven now, he has allowed me to eat before him every night without having to hear him scream.

This year the change over to daylight saving time has a very real, beneficial impact on my life. Maybe the person who convinced us all to take part in DST was on to something. On second thought, changing the clocks is still very annoying.

A Typical Day With My Son

07:00 – 08:00 AM --> Wake up and change diaper

08:00 – 09:00 AM --> Feed my son and eat breakfast while he digests his food

09:00 – 10:00 AM --> Watch The A-Team while my son plays

10:00 – 10:30 AM --> My son watches Sesame Street while I do housework or post a thought on my blog

10:30 – 11:30 AM --> Change my son’s diaper, feed him a snack and put him in bed when he falls asleep

11:00 – 01:00 PM --> Watch Kung Fu and when necessary, do more housework until my son wakes up

01:00 – 02:00 PM --> Feed my son lunch and find something for myself to eat while he digests his food

02:00 – 03:00 PM --> Watch Kung Fu while I spend time with my son

03:00 – 05:30 PM --> During this time my son usually naps for at least 30 minutes, sometimes as much as an hour and a half, while I either nap or clean up the kitchen (do dishes, etc.) or just watch tv, changing my son’s diaper when he wakes up

05:30 – 07:00 PM --> Make dinner, eat, and then feed my son his dinner

07:00 – 08:00 PM --> Clean up from dinner (do dishes, etc.), get a bottle ready for my son, and get my son ready for bed

08:00 – 09:00 PM --> Feed my son while watching tv and put him to bed for the night when he falls asleep.

09:00 – 10:00 PM --> If bottles need to be made, I make them, if not I just watch tv and relax

After 10:00 PM --> I either go to bed or just space out in front of the tv until I am ready for bed

* I really don’t spend all that time doing housework but instead spend the time watching tv. It just sounds better if I say I do housework.

Just One More Thing...

It seems I picked a great time to stay home from work. The Scotties Tournament of Hearts (the annual women's curling tournament) just wrapped up 2 weeks of play on February 25, the Canada Winter Games is in it's second and last week of competitions, the Tim Horton's Brier just began Saturday (the annual curling tournament for men) and the NCAA Dvision I Championship, otherwise known as the Road to the Final Four or March madness, begins in about a week and a half. All of these events have coverage throughout the day that save me from watching soaps or Oprah.

My Worst Fear

I remember the day well; it was a cool sunny day, or maybe it was a cool snowy day, or was it just cloudy. Okay, so I don’t remember the weather on the day well at all but the weather is completely irrelevant to the occurrence that fated day; I still remember the day fairly well, it was a Friday, or was it a Saturday. I guess the day is even irrelevant to someone who does not have places to be or things to do in the outside world. Let’s just move on into the story now.

The day started like every other day during the past three weeks, except that this day was a Friday (I am really sure of it too I am not just making this up). My eight-month-old son forced me to wake up early to get him out of his crib and his wet diaper, and give him some nourishment. Once the feeding finished and baby my son was satisfied, I sat him in his bouncer in front of the television, which was tuned to children’s programming, and I continued on my usual routine.

This day I had to make bottles for him, as I do every other day, so I hid in the kitchen and began that slow boring process (luckily I was able to prepare the water before feeding so I just had to sterilize the bottles and mix the formula). As I continued the mind-numbing task, having my mind drift aimlessly through random thought after random thought, I began to hear noises from the other room. It took me some time to recognize the noise but I finally realized that my son was giggling so much I would swear he was actually laughing. I found this quite odd because he has never laughed like that before at the television. In fact, he rarely giggles much at the television period.

I continued making bottles expecting the ‘laughter’ to stop but to my surprise, the laughter continued. As a concerned parent, I decided I needed to find out the cause of the laughter so I stopped making bottles and went to investigate. As I got closer to the television, an unmistakable voice attacked my ears. I didn’t want to admit the voice indeed belonged to the character I despised but once I turned the corner, the dread enveloped me. My first instinct was to reach for the remote and change the channel but decided I could not deprive my child of the enjoyment he seemed to be getting from the show so I left the channel alone.

For the first eight months of my child’s life I was able to shield him from the idiosyncrasies of the big purple dinosaur and his so called friends but one day after he reached the eight month plateau, my hard work was wasted. My child has been exposed to Barney and, for some incomprehensible reason he actually really likes him. He doesn’t like the show because when Barney is not in view, no giggles can be heard but once Barney pops into view, my son just can’t stop giggling. I guess this is not really a bad thing though because hearing a baby’s laughter is probably the best sound one can hear, it sure beats crying and screaming anyhow.

At Home Update!

As promised, here is an update of my life at home with baby my son. For the most part things are going well at home; I have quickly got into a routine and most days my son lets the routine play out with little or no interruptions. He still eats 5 to 6 times a day so a lot of time is dedicated to feeding him but he is generally quiet then so I do not mind at all. He takes two (2) naps a day so I can usually get some work done around the house. My son is a quiet baby whom generally only cries or get cranky when he is hungry or after he has done the nasty in his diaper.

I have managed to find four (4) episodes of Kung Fu on TV every day with an additional episode on one or two days a week. The only downfall is that every station likes to run the same episode during the same week or 2-week period so I end up only watching one or two episodes a day. Since the show is on so frequently I do not mind missing an episode anymore, which allows me to get work done when my son naps through one.

Enough about me and back to my son. He seems to refuse to crawl no matter how hard I try to help him learn. Every now and then, it seems he knows how to crawl but just does not seem to want to. He is much happier scooting on the back of his head. He lifts his ass in the air and pushes off with his feet, dragging his head on the floor as he goes. He also likes the barrel roll technique for getting around too. I am almost ready to give up on him crawling but I just hope he starts walking soon so he can grow some hair on the back of his head, he looks funny with a huge bald patch there.

My son is currently nursing a cold so he is all congested and snotty. Since he enjoys putting his snotty fingers all over my face, including smacking my mouth, I have also become sick so taking care of him has become difficult. I can only hope the worst is over so he can clear his congestion soon and get back to normal. I was not going to add a picture to this post but decided I could not do that to y’all. I will try to update more frequently but I still cannot promise anything.

My New Blog!

To all my many, many fans (or to those bored enough to read my blog daily) I have some good news to share with you all. Since I have had some extra time on my hands, at least today anyhow, I created a new blog (and tweaked this one a bit). After some early complaints I paid no heed to about having too many sports related posts on my blog, I decided I should create a new blog totally devoted to sports to save those of you not interested in sports, or at least not in all sports, some time. The Shuster's Sports Commentary is my new creation solely dedicated to sports. I shall be posting a meaningful post there in the next few days for those interested parties (or for those bored enough to read just about anything).

P.S. I shall be giving an update on my time off very shortly as well.