Jet Lag

It's 5:45 AM here in Shoreline, and we've been back for a few days now, but we're still adjusting to the jet lag. I don't remember it being so bad or waking up so early upon our return in the past, but I'm sure that's been the case. However, this time, I feel like the jet lag's been way harder coming home then going there, and I don't remember it being this hard ever. I mean the boys have been waking up at 3:30 AM like every single morning since we've been home. Some mornings we can get one of them back to bed, or both of them, and some mornings we can't. This morning they woke up at 4:30, or Ryan did, and Jack woke up shortly after. I can't help but wonder when they'll get back to their 7:00 wake up time.

Let it be known, I am NOT a morning person, and those early mornings are rough...especially the darkness, the complete and utter darkness for hours upon end, and then it just means I'm exhausted come 8 PM, which is normally my prime time for myself. So it's been interesting adjusting back to say the least.

But that's jet lag after returning, let me share about the jet lag while there.

It was fun to read over my last post I wrote about jet lag from January as it's wild to think it was so different this time around. We didn't have any really early mornings. In fact our first few mornings we slept till 10 AM! What in the world? When was the last time any of you slept that late? I can't even remember the last time I slept past 8. But it probably helped that we didn't get to sleep till 1 or 2 AM.

I don't think there was a single morning where I woke up before the kids or where I was up in the middle of the night because I just couldn't sleep, but none of us went to bed quite as early as we have in the past, which I'm sure helps with the sleeping late part.

This time around, I think we were way more relaxed about the sleeping thing and there were some nights the kids didn't go to bed till 11 or 12! It felt so strange and so wild, but I think Peter and I just realized we could spend so much of our evening trying to force the kids to bed at an early time, which takes away from precious time with his family, or we could just put them to bed late and make the most of our evening time with them. 

So the kids went to bed late the first few nights, but they'd fall asleep so fast, and the first few nights they'd wake up just a few hours as if they were waking from a nap, which was a bit of a pain, but then we'd just put a show on for them or feed them some food if they were hungry and just let them enter into our adult space rather than spend an hour or so trying to force them back to sleep, and then we'd try the bedtime routine again in an hour or so, and more often than not it worked!

There weren't too many nights where we felt like we were fighting the kids to go back to bed. But there have definitely been nights where we thought to ourselves, they're exhausted and they should go to bed, but the truth is, they'll probably just wake up in an hour or so.

After about a week, I'd say the kids fully adjusted to the time difference. I mean they'd still fall asleep in the car and what not at strange times, but that's okay. For the most part they'd go to bed pretty easily, but not quite as early as they'd go to bed at home, but again, I'm okay with that.

Anyhow, as I've said before, jet lag is a beast that takes far too long to tame and then by the time you tame it, you're getting back on a plane to go home! It's actually really helped to read through my past jet lag posts (here and here and here) as it's really normalized all that we went through.

But I think I forgot about the jet lag once you get home as that's pretty beastly too!

All that to say, don't let the fear of jet lag stop you from traveling internationally or domestically with kids, as it's all worth it in the end, and it forces everyone to become adaptable, and allows us to see just how adaptable our kids are!