In a panic, I would jump out of bed, quickly throw on some clothes and shout across the house, "Girls? Are you up?? Are you dressed?? Come on! You have to eat! We have to leave here in 20 minutes!!!"
Just like in Standard Time, M and L would come ambling into the kitchen, their hair looking like rats nests and shoes and socks in their hands, not on their feet. They truly did not seem to sense the panic I was feeling.
"Let's go! Let's go!," I cried in a panic. "We have to leave in 10 minutes and you still haven't eaten!"
"Can I have eggs?," asked L every single morning.
"No! No eggs! No time! You don't even have time for oatmeal or cereal!," I exclaimed, throwing a package of breakfast biscuits at her.
"What? No chocolate!," L whined. "I don't like this. I only like chocolate!"
"Tough! It's this or nothing," I said. "Do you want to go to school hungry?"
"No," she pouted. "I guess I'll try it."
That was on a good day. The bad days this week had the girls eating their non-chocolate breakfast biscuits in the car.
During our "What's for Breakfast?" conversation, I was busy trying to put together lunch boxes. Thankfully, I use bento boxes that I actually remembered to pack every night, so lunch wasn't so hard. Morning snacks on the other hand. . . One day, I figured they'd get a snack at school (they informed me that afternoon I was wrong), one day they both got applesauce that they hated, one day one got goldfish and the other salted caramel pretzels (I mixed them up, I was informed by L whining, "I hate those pretzels" after school. One day, I was so desperate, they got Raisinets and yogurt covered raisins. I justified that with the fact that raisins are close to grapes, even if they are covered in chocolate.
We jumped in the car about 8 minutes before the first bell and I was grateful we live less than 5 minutes away. The girls jumped out of the car with 2 minutes to go. Every morning, they heard the same lecture, in the car. "You're lucky we live so close to school! Look at the time! If we lived any farther away, you'd be late. Tomorrow, you must move faster in the morning!" The only one who listened, was me.
We are now on Spring Break, which is great because it gives us a week to get used to the new time change. It's not so great, because so much togetherness causes lots of cranky girls and fights. We went out for lunch today and M and L were sitting across from each other. L was doing a little dance in her seat and M kept whining, "Stop!!" If you have kids, you know "Stop!!" is interpreted as "Do it some more, even more annoying", so L did. Finally, as we were walking out, I said, "Look. Spring Break can either be very long or very short. It's your choice." L said, "Of course it's going to be short, Mommy! It's not our choice." I looked at her and said, "Yes it is! If you choose not to fight, you won't be punished the entire break." "No, Mommy," she replied. "Every day is 23. It's Daylight Savings. Of course it's going to be short!" I stopped walking, looked at her and said, "Wait a second. L, do you think there are now 23 hours in the day?" "Yes," she said seriously. It took every ounce of strength I had not to laugh. I tried explaining how the rolling of the clocks work, but by that time, we were back in the car and she was more interested in playing her video game than listening to me.
Here's hoping we get back on track during Spring Break!
