This is my last blog post of 2011.
Now that’s reason to celebrate.
And by celebrate I mean downing a plastic cup filled with ginger ale with the 12 and under crowd while trying to keep confetti out of my hair.
And by confetti I mean 200 glossy pages from an old Vogue magazine ripped into teeny-tiny pieces that I doubt my non-Dyson will be able to suck up.
The cutting was done by said pre-tweens, including my own 7-year-old, who is all about ringing in 2012 by staying up until 12:12 a.m.
Clever, huh?
The problem is I don’t think I can even stay up that late.
Pathetic, I know.
I am not opposed to letting little ones stay up well past their bedtimes on New Year’s Eve. After all, you only get to bid adieu to 2011 once in your life. However, if you have a child like mine, then you know that by allowing the midnight madness to take place, you are opening yourself up to what could be a horrendous start to the New Year.
You see, I have spawned a child who wakes up at the same time every morning, regardless of when she goes to sleep.
Translation: Bedtime at 7 p.m. = wake up at 6 a.m. Likewise, bedtime at 12:12 a.m. = wake-up at 6 a.m.
My daughter’s internal alarm clock does not deviate no matter how late she’s allowed to stay up.
Last year we spent New Year’s Eve with my family in Hawaii and my daughter was allowed to party until midnight-—midnight in New York.
Thanks to a five-hour time difference, my kid could run around the living room at 7 p.m. blowing her horn, shaking her noise maker, stuffing her face with confetti cupcakes and lighting sparklers with her cousins, and still hit the hay by 8:30 p.m.
This year we are far from paradise, and unfortunately, secretly setting our home’s clocks back a few hours to mimic midnight may not work with these pint-sized smarties.
Will you or did you let your kids stay up until midnight?
What do the after-effects look like?