Thanksgiving and a Birthday

I am publishing this post almost a year after I started drafting it. It's been a good year for my family though not a great year at work or for the country in general. Here's hoping that by the time I publish a post for Thanksgiving 2010, things have turned around.

November 24, 2009 - November 25, 2009

My son is not sleeping tonight; he is waking up every half hour with another perceived need or complaint. He has woken up to urinate, to get a drink of water (related), to tell me he doesn't have any "company is his room for sleeping," to ask for his toy cars, and to get tucked in more tightly. It is actually a wonderful way to begin my birthday because I was not at home when he went to bed tonight at a ridiculously early hour. His early bedtime is the result of a convergence of a singular process and a yearly one; we (the parents) are taking away his nap and we have just set the clock's back reverting to Standard Time from Daylight Savings Time.

It's easy to understand why the nap deprivation is doing some damage. He had two hours of slumber every day beginning at noon and it's easy understand why he is getting tired earlier. But we've been through days with him without naps before and there was never a direct correlation to his bedtime. The real culprit is our reversion to standard time. On the first Sunday in November we set the clocks back an hour (last Sunday in October in the E.U.). It is pitch black out at 5:30 these days and my kid can't handle it.

In all respects my kid is essentially a farm animal or a farmer, more likely the livestock. It gets dark, he wants to sleep. The unfortunate product of the early bedtime is my son waking up repeatedly beginning anywhere between 2 and 4 AM. There is significant controversy in the history and practice of DST, my complaint about my kid's inability to stay awake past Six pm is a drop in the bucket.

November 25-26, 2009

Despite the lack of sleep because of my son's frequent requests and complaints, we piled in the car for Tampa on Wednesday morning. After a stop at the library, a run for 3 dozen bagels to be frozen in my mother-in-law's freezer #2, and a fill-up at the gas station, we left in the pouring rain for the 4.6 hour drive to Odessa, Florida. It was uneventful apart from the numerous accidents we passed in the deluge. The boy had to pee once and I pulled past the shoulder onto the grass where he peed while standing on the door frame and never stepped outside of the Toyota. I got some birthday calls en route.

I had a nice birthday steak dinner and an ice cream pie with a candle in it. Yeah, 35.

On Thanksgiving morning my mother-in-law was twittering around the house pretending to have something to do. My father-in-law was deep frying the turkeys for later in the day. People came and drank and ate and fun was had by all. End of story.

*I hope everyone and their children have a wonderful Halloween and Thanksgiving*