Welcome to the World of Jet Lag

They (the jet lag experts) say it takes one day to make up for every hour of time difference between the location you came from and the one you're now in. So that means it will take us 13 days to get back to a normal sleep routine.  Steve is determined to disprove that theory by using large quantities of coffee (in the adults) and Angry Birds, DVDs, and any other form of entertainment to lure the kids away from sleep during the day.  I think we're actually getting worse though.

Here are the times each family member woke up in the last 13 hours (it's now 4:33 am):

Autumn: woke at 12:50 am

Josiah: woke at 4 pm (yesterday)

Sheehan: woke at 11:30 pm (yesterday)

Kate: woke at midnight

Steve: woke at 2 am by the entire family piling on top of him in the guest room bed, begging to go to Denny's for the third time in the past 36 hours (which we did end up doing)

Here are the locations we've slept/tried to sleep, at various times over the past 24 hours:

Each in their own bed, except Steve

Steve, Sheehan, or Josiah on a couch or love seat

Steve, Kate, or Autumn in guest room bed

Steve in Josiah's bed

Steve's head on Autumn's toddler bed, his butt on the floor

Kate, Autumn on floor in playroom (Autumn laying across train track)

Kate curled up on two kitchen chairs pushed together to form a bed

Lack of sleep causes you to do things you don't typically do. For example, allowing your six year old to babysit your newly adopted two year old while you sleep and pray that nobody will fall down the stairs (like she did on Day 1 back home), turn on the stove, or exit the house. He did a pretty good job because I never heard any screams (just a lot of bu yao's) and the CO and smoke detectors haven't gone off yet. Autumn crawled into bed with me around 8:30 pm.

At 11 pm, Josiah came into my room, where Autumn and I were sleeping (Autumn on a mound of blankets and pillows on the floor which broke her anticipated fall from the bed) and began talking to me at Superbowl Party level and shining a flashlight in Autumn's face.  Then he started running around the room like Tai Lung, the evil snow leopard from Kung Fu Panda (he imitates this character by running around on all fours with his shirt off).  I hissed at him to get out.  Then I heard him fumbling with his flashlight in the hall and I felt bad and I asked him to come back in.  I apologized for being so rough, then asked him to go downstairs to play.

An hour later, Steve walked into the dark room.  I said, "what's up?" as I was typing on the iPad.   He said in a frustrated tone, "I'm up.  That's what's up!  Everywhere I go, I can hear Josiah's voice." Immediately after Steve had moved from the guest room to the couch (which wasn't far enough away to tune Josiah out) to Josiah's bed, Sheehan and Josiah moved upstairs to their room to play. So, Steve moved back down to the guest room and then the boys proceeded to go back to the playroom (next to the guest room in the basement) to play.  Josiah may as well play his drums if he's going to talk because he's not capable of a whisper or remembering to whisper.  A little later, I heard Josiah in the kitchen eating fruit loops, discussing which puppets are indeed Muppets with Sheehan, but he was talking so loudly that it sounded like he was having a conversation with me.

And trying to get any sleep while a two year old is awake is nearly impossible. Here's what it looked like, the night before last, when I tried to sleep and watch Autumn at the same time: I laid down a couple of sofa blankets and a pillow to create a bed on the floor of the playroom. The carpet covered cement slab even felt good at that point. Autumn saw me laying down, which automatically meant, climb on top of Mama and begin bouncing up and down like on a horsey ride at Chuck E. Cheese. After I stopped laughing and distracted her off me with a toy, I closed my eyes, but in a few minutes sensed her near me. I looked up and she had a drum stick in her hand. She started playing the drums on my head and laughing! I put a stop to that, but then she decided to lay her 34 pound torso across the side of my face with her knee holding down my hair. I started laughing at the absurdity of it all, while trying not to suffocate. She was so heavy, that I couldn't lift her body to get her knee off my hair. We were both laughing hysterically. I could not get her off me and I could not stop laughing. Finally, she rolled off my head and onto my hip for another round of horsey rides. Is being a human jungle gym in that Attaching in Adoption book? Because I don't remember that section.

Other happenings from yesterday that aren't directly related to jet lag and sleep deprivation, but are worth mentioning: At about 8:45 am we decided to go to the playground to stay awake longer. We put Autumn on the swings for the first time (with us) and she laughed a very fun and contagious laugh while we pushed her. Then she moved onto the slides. One time she went down the slide and missed her footing, so she tripped and went down head first. She looked like Super Toddler with arms straight out in front of her. She did a face plant into the wood chips. I went over to console her crying (she wasn't really hurt), but I couldn't stop laughing because of how funny her slide looked. I almost peed my pants because I was laughing so hard and had just had a grande mocha, as part of Steve's anti-jet lag regiment. I should totally be nominated for worst mom of the year award for laughing at her nose-dive. But, it was just so funny-looking. Super Toddler.

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