Concepts Hard To Explain

by · March 13, 2014

Will Truman

Will Truman is the Editor-in-Chief of Ordinary Times. He is also on Twitter.

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37 Responses

  1. Aaron W says:
    March 13, 2014 at 4:38 pm

    To be fair, I’m an adult, and I still don’t understand Daylight Savings Time. Why do we keep doing this again?Report

    • Will Truman in reply to Aaron W says:
      March 13, 2014 at 4:40 pm

      I’m vociferously anti-DST. But I do understand the concept and can make the adjustment. Lain, however, does not and has not made the adjustment.

      Which would be less of a problem if her bed-time weren’t midnight before the changeover.Report

  2. NewDealer says:
    March 13, 2014 at 4:45 pm

    As far as I can tell being a parent means sleep deprivation until the child reaches somewhere between 6-8 years old.Report

    • Will Truman in reply to NewDealer says:
      March 13, 2014 at 4:58 pm

      On the whole, I feel like we have it pretty good in this respect. The lingering issue is that Clancy is the person that breastfeeds her at night and the person who needs to get up early and go to work. My offers to take over night time duties (armed with a bottle) have yet to be accepted.

      Prior to DST we were actually doing better, with basically one wake-up a night. Now we’ve got a late bed time and more likely two wake-ups, which is more straining.Report

  3. NewDealer says:
    March 13, 2014 at 4:47 pm

    Also my least favorite times of the year are around when we fall back and spring forward. I like to go to the gym in the mornings (and will never go after work for a variety of reasons) and find it difficult to wake up when it is still dark outside. It is nice when it is sun rise around 6 AM which is my waking time.Report

  4. zic says:
    March 13, 2014 at 7:10 pm

    I suspect there’s a growth spurt in the works, too. They’ve often got that one step back, two steps forward feel to them; and the steps back are most obvious, initially. Lain’s just gathering up her comfort now in preparation for another lurch into independence.

    Really, it takes some doing, that independence. Cutting your apron strings is traumatic.Report

    • Will Truman in reply to zic says:
      March 13, 2014 at 7:13 pm

      On the upshot, Lain and I rarely have to co-sleep in the morning, which was pretty regular for a while.Report

      • zic in reply to Will Truman says:
        March 13, 2014 at 8:06 pm

        She still taking a morning nap (or you still wishing for one)?

        Seems like life settled down pretty nicely after we outgrew morning naps; a good afternoon nap every day, and then a regular nights sleep.

        But I was particularly hardassed about bedtime; too. I needed that. So I settled on one, and it grew later and later as they aged, but I persisted, “You will go to bed, all rituals envoked, at this time. I don’t care if you sleep or not. But you will be in your bed, lights out, with all teeth brushed, stories read, and prayers said.”

        Funnily, this had the biggest payoff when we travelled; because it just was the way things were. So while the cousins were up acting like banshees, my kids quietly (and with some relief, usually) went to bed.Report

      • Will Truman in reply to Will Truman says:
        March 13, 2014 at 8:37 pm

        She only gets the afternoon nap. What happens is that she wakes up at 5:30 or so and sometimes will not go back to sleep by herself. It used to be that she always needed co-sleeping, but that’s become less frequent. That’s the step forward. DST has represented a step back, resulting in (right now) even later bedtimes than normal and the need to drink before bed (which we had previously gotten away from). Those are the steps back.Report

  5. Jaybird says:
    March 13, 2014 at 7:51 pm

    They extended Daylight Saving Time by a couple of months in order to save money, save energy, save whatever. It turns out that studies have shown that this is *NOT* what happened, where effects were measurable at all, they showed that the opposite happened.

    AND YET THE GOVERNMENT IS STILL TAKING OUR HOUR.

    This is why I am pushing for a Constitutional Amendment that says that laws must delineate what the goal of passing the law would be, the cost of passing the law, and ways of measuring both things.

    AND IF THEY DON’T MEASURE UP, TO AUTOMATICALLY SUNSET THE GODDAMN LAW.Report

  6. Will Truman says:
    March 13, 2014 at 9:19 pm

    Clancy points out that there is a #6 to the second category: Gravity.Report

    • zic in reply to Will Truman says:
      March 13, 2014 at 9:23 pm

      I predict a #7 coming — “No.”

      But one of my favorites was pronouns. Elder sprout, as he began learning to speak, would hold his arms up and say, “Carry you?”Report

      • Will Truman in reply to zic says:
        March 13, 2014 at 10:23 pm

        She just started – a few days ago – requesting to be picked up. She would previously put her hands up when she thought we were going to pick her up, but she hadn’t been proactive about it.Report

      • J@m3z Aitch in reply to zic says:
        March 13, 2014 at 10:31 pm

        Daughter number 2 picked up on the concept of “upsey daisy” pretty early. She couldn’t say it very clearly, so she’d say “oopey doopey,” which was pretty darn cute. But she didn’t precisely attach it to the act of being picked up. Instead she attached it to the picking up of her specifically, and ultimately as a reference to herself, in the phrase “I Doopey.” And thus a nickname was born, which still sticks.

        Curiously, daughter #3’s non-English middle name means “Daisy” in English.

        And so it is that we have two daughters each nicknamed Daisy, but with no problems of confusion.Report

  7. Kazzy says:
    March 13, 2014 at 11:43 pm

    I’ve sort of taught Mayo the meaning of no, said with a particular tone and facial expression.

    He has otherwise mastered: “Oh, you don’t want me to do this? Here goes.”Report

  8. Will Truman says:
    March 14, 2014 at 1:48 am

    So we have a #6 on the first list: Dad is mad.

    Which is unfortunate.

    Last night I was trying to watch the end of a TV show that I have been watching so that I can devote all of my energies to Breaking Bad. The computer I was trying to watch on it wasn’t working. I was getting pretty upset and saying some not very nice things to the computer. Lain started crying. Loudly. It’s maybe the second time she has done that and the first time involved physical contact (I was telling her “No!” and holding her arms stationary so that she would stop doing what she was doing) which I had figured touched her off then.

    This time I wasn’t mad at her, though. She wasn’t even in proximity. I guess she just heard my voice with a particular inflection and she knows what that means and doesn’t like it.

    It happened again this evening, though in a completely different context. When I read, I do voices. When I read Green Eggs and Ham I read the grumpy guy with a very grumpy voice. I guess my grumpy voice sounds like my angry voice because immediately after I started she started crying. I’ve read that book to her over 100 times and always with that voice. But now that she identifies that voice, I guess it’s different.Report

    • Boegiboe in reply to Will Truman says:
      March 14, 2014 at 12:40 pm

      She’s at the stage when she’s starting to be able to identify emotions and their signals. It’ll take a good while longer before she starts to figure out their causes.

      *unsolicited advice
      You might be tempted to stop using the grumpy voice, but I’d suggest easing it back in with warnings like “Daddy’s going to do the grumpy voice now. Is that OK?” If she says “No” and you respect that, then she’ll probably start asking for the grumpy voice after a while. It’ll help her contextualize acting angry, which is something she has some control over, vs being angry, which she doesn’t feel as much in control of.
      /unsolicited adviceReport

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