Following Edge

What's a 5 year old doing taking a walk in downtown Eugene in the middle of the night? We're in the midst of an experiment Lauren has been working towards for almost two years... to stay up through the middle of the night and see what happens in the world as we normally sleep. I don't recall exactly how the idea came to mind. We watched an episode of Mr. Rogers when Lauren was 3 that showed people who work at night, but I think we'd already started the conversation prior to that.

The problem has been that it's difficult to take the time to adjust your sleep cycle while you're in school, or summer camp, or planning to spend time with grandma, etc. Finally, this week, after our big vacation, a big birthday party for Anne Marie and myself, and a week visiting with my father while he's in town, we've found the perfect time.

We started Friday and have been trying to go to sleep an extra 2 hours later each day. So, yesterday we were walking around downtown Eugene about 11:00pm talking about how the daytime stores are closed and how the places where adults go to dance and drink and eat are now open.

Today, we're near the "deepest" part of our experiment and hope to be out around 2:00am to see what happens after the city becomes even quieter. The problem... Lauren has also discovered why day sleeping is hard... she can't sleep later than 8:00am, which doesn't give much sleep for a child used to 10 hours of sleep a night. We're trying to make up for it my resuming afternoon naps, which Lauren gave up a month or two ago. But, tonight, we may need to sleep in the late evening as well and re-awaken in the middle of the night to finish our experiment.

I love having a daughter who's interested in finding things out.