Julia goes to bed at 1...

Since Julia started Kindergarten, we've sent Julia to bed at 9 pm. For the past several years, it's been at 10 pm, so it's been a bit of an adjustment for her and us.

The other day, I woke Julia up at her usual time, 7:20 am, to get ready for school. I shook her a little bit and she said, "Daddy... I'm tired. I was up until one in the morning."

"You were?" I asked. "What happened? Did you wake up and couldn't get back to sleep?"

"No," she yawned. "I was just up until one in the morning."

I was a little confused about this. She had gone to be a little later than normal, about 9:15 pm, but it wasn't that late that she would be yawning all day.

I don't think too much about it, but then when I picked up Julia from her after-school sitter, the sitter came up to us and said, "Julia's resting on the couch. She said that she was up until one in the morning, and she's very tired."

We walked over to where Julia is resting on the couch. She wasn't asleep, but she was watching TV with a sleepy look on her face.

We told her to get a move on. She got up and I told her, "Julia, you did not go to bed at one in the morning."

Julia said, "Yes, I did. That's why I'm tired."

"What makes you think that you went to be so late?" I asked her.

"That's what it said on the cable box, Dad!" she retorted. "Last night, when I went to bed, it said '1' on the box."

I laughed because now it made sense. Our cable box has a problem every now and then that instead of showing what time it is, it shows the last channel the box was on before it becomes stuck and needs to be rebooted. I've had to do it about 4 times in the last two months. It was stuck on channel 1, so Julia thought the '1' was how late she stayed up.

We smiled at the thought of her yawning and complaining all day long about how tired she was for staying up way too late. Must have learned it from me when I complain about how tired I am on Sunday mornings. (Sniff... They grow up so fast...)