Small Style, Park Style

We are up in Northern Ontario at my parents' summer cottage where the Internet is slower than molasses in January that has been frozen solid and therefore does not move at all. (But really, I'll keep my cavils to a minimum because until about five years ago we didn't even have flush toilets, or telephones up here so any Internet at all is pretty rad.) Anyway, in a rare example of awesomeness on my part, I thought ahead! And took small style pictures! And uploaded them in advance! 

Younger Sister and I took Stella and the Geriatric Fat White Rocket dog to the park for some early-morning swings. Since, you know, we were up anyway. But it turns out that 7:30 AM is THE PERFECT time to go to the park, because it is beautiful, and not hot, and empty. 

 Paaaarrrk! Woop! Woop!

Early morning sun.

To say that Stella enjoys the swings is somewhat of an understatment.

Stroller NO! Walking NO! Carrying NO! If you don't mind, I'll just scoot the rest of the way home. Mmmkay?

Stella Wore:

Shirt & Bloomers: Baby Gap

Shoes: See Kai Run

Headband (of Love): AdornMeGirl

As always, linking up with Mama Loves Papa for some Small Style action. 

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What Was I Thinking

This is what we are doing today:

• Leaving the house at 6 AM.
• Getting in the car and driving 500 miles with a screamy baby
• Attempting to cross the border with the following complications:
  • One baby sans father which can sometimes be complicated (see international kidnapping)
  • One car that does not belong to me and sports US plates while I hold a Canadian passport and Japanese drivers licence 
  • One sister who forgot her passport in Canada
  • A car full o' beer (because my parental units believe that buying Canadian beer in the states and then bringing it across the border is totally the way to go, but they maxed out their quota, so we are now their official alcohol sherpas.)

I predict a date with a customs officer in my future.

Wish us luck! Or punch me in the teeth! It might be less terrible!

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Baby Jet Lag

Baby's first trip on the A380.

NOT SLEEP PROBLEMS AGAIN! 

If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, you’ve probably started to bang your head against you keyboard just to relieve the sheer tedium, because every second post on Expatria Baby details, with despondence and self pity, the many and sundry ways in which I do not get enough sleep. 

But before you navigate away from this page, hear this: I am writing in the spirit of optimism and I bring you the lessons that I have learned from a year of jumping across eight or fourteen timezones ever six weeks.

What to Expect When You’re Expecting Sleeplessness

 Having realistic expectations is crucial for surviving baby jet lag. Think of baby jet lag as a nice little trip down memory lane: lucky you! You get to revisit the nighttimes of newborn hood. 

• There will be a lot of, “wut? I slept two hours in a row. What more do you want from me?” And a little, “it’s 3:30 AM, so WAAAAAHHHHH! WAAAAAHHH! WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!”  Just resign yourself to the fact that you’re going to be awake a lot and then figure out strategies to deal.  
• The first night will go relatively smoothly; your baby will be tired from the trip and will allow you to get a few consecutive hours of sleep
• Nights two and three will be torture. You won’t have slept on the plane and you’ll be so tired that you will feel like vomiting
• On the fourth night things will finally start to improve, but expect jet lag to continue for at least a week, or more likely two (especially on the return trip).

Baby sleeping on top of Japan

So You’re Leaving On A Jet Plane With Your Baby

You’ll read about adjusting your clock twenty minutes each night before your departure, and making sure that you maintian your typical bedtime routine, but that is total BS and does make one lick of difference. There’s actually very little that you can do to prepare, except for this:

• Make a huge deposit in your sleep bank in the days leading up to your trip. Get as much sleep as you can. Go to bed early. Nap. Have your partner look after the baby in the mornings so you can get an additional thirty minutes of sleep. Trust me, being over-tired prior to the trip will cause baby jet lag to feel about as terrible as coming off heroin*.

*I’ve never come off heroin before, so think of this more as a literary flourish and less as representation of reality. 

Sunset and wing. At least it's pretty when we're awake. 

Up In the Air 

Again, there’s not much you can do to help prevent baby jet lag en route; baby jet lag is going to happen. But here’s what you can do to help yourself feel like you're doing something.

• Encourage your baby to sleep as much as possible: be boring; do low-energy things; avoid making friends with the rambunctious four-year-old Korean girl behind you; keep bright lights and screens turned off; and never under any circumstances shift position while your baby is sleeping. Otherwise, AWAAAAAAAKKKKE! 
• If you are breastfeeding, drink lots of water. You’ll be a pee-pee machine but you’ll also not be dehydrated. And you'll need that hydration to continue being a milky cow. (Fun fact, in addition to messing with your sleep schedule, jet leg messes up your milk production schedule.)

Baby AWAKE over the pacific. 

Final Destination

The key here is getting enough rest, at whatever time that may be. Fight for as much good quality sleep as possible in a bed (i.e. not a car seat or stroller or other random place) because being overtired will only serve to exacerbate  baby jet lag. DO NOT be tempted to keep the baby awake so she’ll “sleep at night”. Ha! You’ll only set yourself up for a, all night scream-a-thon. 

• Switch to the local timezone immediately, and help re-set your baby’s time clock by offering food, milk, naps at the appropriate hour in the new timezone. 
• If you can, wait until you arrive at your final destination before putting your baby down for a nap and / or bed. I’ve resorted to repeatedly hitting myself on the head to keep my girl laughing until we arrived home and she could sleep. Trust me, it’s totally worth the effort and your sanity will thank you. 
• Keep naptimes about the same length or just a little longer as they would be at home. DO NOT let your kid sleep for hours in a row, tempting as silence may be...
• If you arrive in the daytime or evening, get outside for a little natural light. A good little tool for calculating the best times to get daylight is here. Natural light is the best medicine in combatting baby jet lag.

 

Sleeping over Russia.

How To Cope At Four AM - The First Three Nights

Try as you might to resist baby jet lag, your kid’s sleep schedule is going to be effed, and there’s not much you can do about it save for maintaing your sanity. My rule is that anything goes for the first three nights. After that, you’re on your own, baby (just kidding, but I am a little less sympathetic to midnight play sessions after night three or four.) Here are my tips for preservation of mental health: 

• Disregard typical rules combatting jet lag. Sleep when the baby sleeps. And that includes taking naps. You’ll need the extra ZZZZZZZZs to avoid jumping out the window at four am with your kid JUST. WONT. SLEEP. HOLY. EFFING. BALLS.
• For the first three nights, do anything to get your kid to sleep. Nurse to sleep. Rock to sleep. Co-sleep to sleep. Pace around the house while listening to podcasts to sleep. Whatever it takes. Do it. Sleep begets sleep and over-tiredness begets screams. 
• As soon as your baby falls asleep, go to bed too. In the first few days, sleep is a precious commodity. Don’t waste it. 
• Your baby may be anxious about being in an unfamiliar cirb or strange room. I often put a blanket on the floor and snooze there until baby falls asleep. (This is the lazy man's way of dealing with middle of the night wake ups.)
• During night wakings, bring baby into bed with you and play for a while, keeping lights low, and activity levels quiet. She’ll probably be up for a few hours, but if you can get her to look at books and play quietly while you doze, then you win. 
• If your darling babe wakes up at four am raring to go, consider just getting up and starting your day a few hours early. Once you’ve had your coffee, it won’t be so bad. 

A Few Hacks

Here are a final few tips that I’ve learnt in my year of living bi-continentally:

• It’s not only sleep schedules that get thrown off: poop schedules get all crazy like. So if your 11 AM pooper is obviously tired but not settling, check the dipe. I’ve learned this lesson the hard way. (See undetected poop explosion.) 
• Homeopathic remedies CAN help sleep SOMETIMES. You have to do a fair amount of research and find the remedy that fits your child’s sleep symptoms exactly, though.
• If you’re crossing multiple timezones, DO NOT plan a vacation that is less than two weeks. You’ll need the second week to recover from the sleep problems of the first.
• Twitter is very entertaining at 3 AM and sympathetic to exhausted parents. 

And there you have it. Baby jet lag is quite terrible. But if you’ve made it through newborn-hood, you can totally handle even the worst case of baby jet lag. Happy travels and sweet dreams! 

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Happy Fourth, America

Happy fourth of July, people of the interwebz! It's my first ever Independence Day celebrated in America and I'm not really sure how to do it properly. We're Canadian, so we don't really understand things like barbecue and pulled pork and cornbread. And were we to try to cook a Fourth Feast, we'd likely douse everything in maple syrup and remark, "This is aboot the best thing ever! Delicious, eh?????"

So I think we'll go out for hamburgers instead.

But what I do know, is that my FIRST. EVER. GUEST POST! just went live at Paul et Paula, which is a super awesome fantastic kids' fashion blog. It would make my day if you clicked on over and left a comment. And would totally make up for my barbecue incompetency woe. 

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Summer Light

Summer in Michigan is perfect with days warm enough for summer dresses and bare feet, but not oppressively hot; lush green everywhere; and a golden hour that lasts and lasts.

The sisters and I have been taking full advantage of our parent-free fiesta and we are enjoying warm summer evenings on the deck with the grill, some beers, and that beautiful evening light.

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Small Style, Suburbs Style

Stella and I are back in North America, reveling the suburban pleasures of front lawns, barbecues, corn on the cob and we couldn't be happier. (Well, technically we could be happier, were it not for Awakegate 2011 which makes me pretty unhappy around the four AM mark and leads me to seriously contemplate the insightfulness and veracity of a certain not-for-children-chindren's-book.)

Anyway, due to the aforementioned Awakegate scandal, energy levels are pretty low and we have not invested significant thought or time into our outfits, and in fact this episode is a bit of a repeat, but we did sit on the front lawn shucking corn and watching the neighbourhood go by, and so I thought, "Great! Small Style." So, here we are, linking up with Morgan at Mama Loves Papa and sharing our moment of suburban bliss. 

Sleep? HA! Lady, you've got another thing coming. And that thing is being awake. 

Despite my serious lack of zzzzz time, I still think you're pretty cute!

Pointing! It's a new thing! 

Stella Wore:

Tee - Bobo Choses

Leggings - Old Navy

Sandals - See Kai Run

Bow - Adorn Me Girl (which I got with a sweet Mama Loves Papa discount. Thanks guys!)

Now, I'm going to look at other cutie pies at Small Style and you should too!

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Yet Another Post Wherein I Bemoan The Fact that My Child Is A Terrible Sleeper

 

I'll bet you didn't think that it was possible for a baby to be awake for twenty-four hours straight, did you. 

Well, Internet, I am here to tell you that, yes, indeed, it is, as has been demonstrated by Awakegate 2011.

We traveled 10907 KM, through four airports, three flights and 20 hours of travel time, and Stella slept maybe for an hour. In three little mini naps. So it's not even like I got a solid chunk of time off.  Nor did Stella did not sleep in the car on the way home from the airport. She did not sleep when we arrived back at my parents' house but was riled up and raring to go. And, in what is surely no surprise to anyone, she was up half the night.

So wakeful was Stella that strangers came up to me as we waited for the shuttle train in Chicago and remarked, "that child STILL has not slept?!!?

Unfortunately for the passengers on flight 0012, we did hit a wall of tiredness around three hours before the end of the Pacific crossing. There was much screaming and thrashing and kicking and whining, but, sadly, no sleep. I thank my lucky stars that our neighbour passengers were all Japanese grandmotherly figures who, as a group, have a love for foreign babies that knows no bounds, are more than happy to play inai inai, BA! (Or, what is more likely, are far too polite to shoot me and my dear sweet screamypants angry and accusatory eye-daggers.)

The way Stella sees it, sleep is fur chumps anyway. Who wants to be unconscious when there is a plane-full of people to wave at! And aisles to walk up and down! And up and down and up and down and up and down! And feet to kick! And peekaboo! And waving! HELLO! HELLO! HELLO! HI! LOOK AT ME! I AM CUTE! KAWAIIIIIIIIIIII!" 

Gold Lounge Baby

Still, we are happy to be back in cooler climes, reveling in open windows, green grass, the cool summer breeze and enjoying the sound of early morning birds.*

*Contrary to appearances, this is not a veiled complaint about being awake during the wee hours. I am genuinely happy about hearing joyful morning chirping. 

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