My poor baby girl is ill. She has a cough and sniffles and needs to see the doctor. She's now 10 months old and aside from scheduled "well baby" visits, she's only been to the doctor's once. Our son on the other hand was a chronic sufferer of ear infections and spent a good bit of time overcoming those nasty episodes. Fortunately, he's been relatively free of those since he was 4 years old.
This illness of course comes on top of the jet lag we all suffer. It's one thing for adults to have jet lag, but kids are another matter entirely. They don't understand time in the same way. Our son at least fell asleep before midnight last night, and this morning he went to school only an hour late. Even so, I dressed him in his sleep, brushed his teeth for him as he was half-asleep, and then carried him to the sofa, where he slept another hour. He'd still be sleeping now if I hadn't made him sit on a stool to eat toast.
Our daughter has compensated for all of this disruption by demanding constant nursing. This development is of course much harder on my wife than on me, since I'm not qualified to complete the task. Like her brother, she would sleep much later into the morning if we were able to stay home with her this week.
Time zones, at least standardized time zones, are relatively recent, being developed in the mid to late 19th century. Interestingly, the impetus for standardizing time in many countries came from the then-state of the art mode of travel: the railroad. Train schedules by necessity had to keep to a unified time, and the timetables published by rail systems often were adopted by local government.
As Vonnegut might have it, it probably isn't so difficult to become unstuck in time.
2 comments:
I don't do well when I travel west. It takes me forever to adjust to the schedule. Going east is always a breeze. Maybe I only become stuck in time in one direction?
Hope she's feeling better soon!
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