Fall Back Moms: What To Do With Your Extra Hour

Before I had kids, I knew what to do with the extra hour that Fall Back provides each October. I slept in. I read the newspaper over a mochachino at the corner Starbucks. I took a long, hot bath. I napped.

But now that I spend upwards of 14 hours a day taking care of two little boys, an extra hour is the last thing I need. I usually spend it doing more of the same thing anyway: wiping glitter glue off the refrigerator handle, extracting graham crackers from the VCR and breaking up fights over a Batman doll that has just one leg and half a cape.

Yet, after several years of Fall Backs, I have come up with some clever things moms can do with their extra hour. Here are a few of the activities that have kept me busy year after year:

1. Explain to your two-year-old why 4:30 a.m. is an ungodly hour to wake up for the day.
   
   
2. Memorize the dialogue in "Finding Nemo." Then stage a reenactment of the movie for your husband when your toddler wakes everyone up again at 4:30 the next day.
   
   
3. Write your resume with the plastic alphabet-shaped magnets on the refrigerator door while you let the kids play the drums on your Tupperware because, darn-it, it's only 3 p.m.
   
   
4. Make a big pile of leaves. Hide in it.
   
   
5. Play the Wiggles' "Nicky Nacky Nocky Noo" over and over backwards, searching for hidden meaning.
   
   
6. Send out a distress signal using the pans from your kid's Easy-Bake oven and the sun, since it's up earlier now. Just like you.
   
   
7. Let the air out of your husband's car tires, so he can find out on Monday what it's like to "Fall Back" into an extra hour with the kids.
   
   
8. Send your brood into the garage -- where hubby is putting air in his tires -- with the toy kazoos your mother-in-law gave them, and call it "quality time."
   
   
9. Count the hours until Spring Ahead mercifully makes you lose an hour. Just 3,864 hours to go!