Seasons Change, People Change

It happens every fall. The days grow a little shorter. The sun goes down a little sooner. I praise God that it's full dark by 8:30 PM.

Wait a second. That's never happened before!

What's going on here?

Once upon a time (uhm, pretty much my whole life until this spring), I was saddened by the definitive notice that these freewheeling summer days were at an end. Light, late into the evening meant freedom and joy and ... well, losing the light meant everybody was going back to school and it was time to get down to business again.

Living in Chicago, I discovered the year I'd moved back, means waking up to sun streaming though your windows at 5:30 AM in July. If that's not enough, it also means leaving the office at 4:30 PM in January having missed the sunset. These things were not my favorite part of the city, let me tell you.

One of my reasons for excitement when we first thought about moving here to Sioux Falls was the fact that the sun doesn't come up at 5:30 any day, all year long! Such a blessing that is when you have a little one who thinks that when it's light out, she needs to be up playing.

Which brings us nicely back to the crux of this summer's dilemma: Rosi refused to go to sleep while it was still light out. She's always been a bit of a night owl. She gets that from her mother. Her normal bedtime is 9:00 PM. Except, here on the western side of the time zone, the mid-summer sun doesn't set until about 9:15 PM. And even at that, it stays light for another 20 minutes or so.

Unfortunately, we've discovered that, in addition to being a night owl, Rosi will wake up by 8:30 AM, no matter what time she gets to sleep. In other words, this summer has been one long sleep-deprivation experiment at our house.

But it's getting to be fallish now. The sun set this evening at 7:56, and Rosi is already in bed. Ahh, the blessed sound of silence. I think I'll go read a book.