In which I maybe reconcile myself to Daylight Saving Time

(Charlie preparing to bike in Bayonne on Sunday.)

So usually I dread daylight saving time and the return to regular time and the clocks changing (automatically now, mostly in our house) an hour back or forth. Charlie's average waking time having been 4am at the latest in the past few days, the thought that he would now be rising at 5am was quite a welcome thought.

Not that clocks and time systems mean so much to Charlie who marches mostly to his own sense of things.

Monday he did wake at 5.30am and we were soon out walking, the better to admire the sun rising to the east over Manhattan. Back in our kitchen, Charlie watched me spoon rice into his lunch containers, told me not to add grapes to his lunchbox and ate a bagel and watermelon.

This latter point may seem ordinary but it is a bit of a change in the past week for Charlie to eat breakfast before boarding the bus. In past years, after a toddlerhood of starting the day with gluten-free waffles in three different flavors, he never woke early enough to eat anything. Now Charlie is the first on his bus and it must have been a long wait till he could eat the morning snack I had packed for him.

His school day was good till he became loudly, yellingly upset during A.P.E. Charlie stayed in his seat at the back of the bus and made a loud sound before coming inside and we thought of how he had, on Sunday, wanted to eat the 'yellow rice' - paella -- he had once eaten in a restaurant. We got some as takeout and Charlie enjoyed it but it must have settled strangely in his stomach. 

Moment(s) of distress and all rather than crawl back into the over-familiar for comfort, Jim announced that he and Charlie would go on a different bike ride than 'the usual local' one, in a different direction. Charlie seemed to pedal a little faster as he and Jim headed off on a nice tour of our town, resulting in the discovery of a newly paved parking lot at the nearby community college (nice pavement = smooth riding).

One walk, a bit of edginess pacing around and hearing the Beatles and Charlie fell asleep somewhere between 'The Word' and 'Michelle' around 10pm, waking up with 45 minutes to go before the bus appeared -- just enough time for what seems to be the new daily thing, a morning walk-with-mom (me), and then boarding the bus and looking back at us waving him off.