Recently my wife Laurie and I attempted to reminisce about the carefree days before our daughter Iris was born in 2003. I was reviewing restaurants and getting into home sausage-making and bread-baking. We were young and flexible.

It turns out we both suffer from parenting-induced retrograde amnesia, because we couldn't remember a damn thing about what we ate for dinner back then — or when we ate it.

Now we have a strict dinnertime and it turns out I love it even more than our daughter does.

How We Started Eating Dinner at 6 p.m.

When Iris first settled into a reliable sleep schedule, we'd put her down to bed at 5:30 and then I'd start making dinner (not bragging; she always woke up within a couple of hours). I'm glad no one ever shot a picture of us at the dinner table back then. Between exhaustion and our crappy 2001-era digital camera, I'm sure the photo could have been titled First Meal After Escaping the Cult.

In any case, dinner was always on the table promptly at 6 p.m.

Iris turned out to be the kind of child who thrived on routine. We turned out to be the kind of parents who would sooner let our child play in a tiger enclosure than skip naptime.

Once Iris's bedtime allowed her to join us at the table, dinnertime became equally sacred. Not "dinnertime" in the sense of a good-old-days polemic about the importance of family dinner, but dinnertime in the sense of 6 p.m. (Not the barbaric hour of 6:05.)

Six o'clock was just late enough to feel like a plausible grown-up mealtime and still get the baby to bed by seven.

Why We Still Eat Dinner at 6 p.m.

It's been over a decade since we first settled on a six o'clock dinner bell. Iris is a teenager now. She stays up past her bedtime and nothing terrible happens. She's outgrown her childhood routines.

I haven't. I still get panicky when it's 6:10 and dinner hasn't quite come together yet. I'll announce, "Dinner at 6:40!" in my Ma'am, I have some bad news; why don't you sit down? voice.

Nobody else cares; turns out I was the toddler all along.

This summer the Seattle school district announced later bell times starting this fall. Laurie is a school librarian, so she and Iris will both be getting home half an hour later. So dinnertime is moving to 6:30. I'll try to keep my tantrums to a minimum.