Outside the Spacetime Continuum

Einstein's 1905 theory of special relativity ushered in the concept of the Spacetime Continuum, that the universe has four dimensions, not three; that time slows down for objects traveling near the speed of light; that time is not constant but variable. I don't profess to understand a word of Einstein's writings, but I do know from recent experience that he was on to something.

Katie's time zone travel and subsequent resistance to a time zone shift represents a sort of time bend for us. Our life has seemed to be traveling near the speed of light ever since we left for China, so I shouldn't be surprised if time slows down on occasion. The source of the slowdown today was our attempt to take matters into our own hands and force poor little Katie to acquiesce to Central Daylight time.

As noted in previous posts, the little party girl has stayed up happily until 3am, smiling, laughing, and generally charming the socks off anything still awake at that hour. Then she sleeps until 1pm to get enough energy up to do it all over again. Soulmate has taken the brunt of these all-night raves, and she is pretty worn out.

So, on the advice of several wise friends, Soulmate got her to go to sleep last night at 1:30 (a minor victory in its own right), and I woke her up at 8am this morning. Then commenced a day of trying to keep her awake until 8pm, which we hope will be her regular bedtime. The first 2 hours were a breeze, but around 11am, she got pretty crabby. By continually altering her activities and keeping her moving, we succeeded in keeping her awake all day except for 2 fairly brief episodes of dozing in her car seat.

Sure enough, she was exhausted by 8 pm, and even a trip to DQ didn't faze her. She got a bath, a bottle, and a kiss and a prayer from daddy, and commenced to fall immediately into a deep sleep. I don't know if we've succeeded in breaking the Spacetime quandry or not, but the evidence so far is promising. The party girl is nowhere to be found.

Speaking of Einstein: it seems like everything written in conjuction with Einstein is confusing. One of our insomnia inducing forays today was to Target to get a sort of personal amusement park, and wouldn't you know it, it's produced (or at least endorsed) by Baby Einstein:

The assembly instructions (written in 3 languages for clarity) reads something like an essay on the theory of relativity. Once an Einstein, always an Einstein I guess.