Through The Night!

Well, it would seem we've finally crossed the time zone barrier. Thursday, Friday and Saturday night= M. slept through each night. (And, therefore, so did Mom! whew. She's relieved.)

AND--BIG news with Thursday's bed-time: DAD put her to bed! Yup. J took M. with her to worship team, and then I put her to bed. WOW! She went easily. She fussed about an hour later and I went in to successfully comfort her.

Now that felt amazing. It's pretty wild. Every single day from the night we landed in CT on, I've been able to hold her. Now, she still prefers mom under stress, and will cry for her, but she will let me hold her in lots of situations.

Sleep

Sleep is (as anticipated) difficult. M. goes down for her nap and bed pretty well, but she's woken up crying around 1 AM the last two nights. J. then went in and slept in her bed.

I wake up worried that everything's ok. J.'s sleeping with a toddler. M. is in a bed in a foreign land. Needless to say--we need SLEEP!

J. and I both start involuntarily dozing in our chairs around 8:30, but are afraid to go to bed and wake up too early. I really wanted to watch the debate last night--I made it most of the way but snored through the last bit.

If You Want A Great Night Of Sleep

Don't stay at a place that's filled to overflowing with newly adopted infants and toddlers.

Now MY child slept (is still sleeping) blissfully. Her dad did not. This was due to a few crying babies on our floor and more recently a rhythmic thumping/tapping sound that continued for about an hour. I imagined it to be some dad playing some game on the floor with his kid. I fault neither the kids nor their new parents. I know that the parents want nothing more than to be sleeping themselves. I know that one of the less desirable things that kids do is not sleep when they darn well should be and that super-parent-though-you-may-be, you can't always induce a pleasant slumber on demand.

I blame the hotel. Can we have some wall and floor thickness, people? I just spent a week in Changsha. It wasn't my favorite place on the planet by a long-shot. Yet, our hotel floor was almost exclusively adoptive families--and narry a sound was to be heard. It can be done. The White Swan is like a Mecca for Chinese adoptive families. EVERYONE has to go to Guangzhou. MOST of those everyones stay here. I recommend a section by section renovation involving LOTS of sound blocking insulation.

Noise

It's a good thing Miss M. is quite the sleeper. Once again she is down for the count with no effort at all. And it's a good thing because this place is decidedly louder than Changsha. Well, so far anyway.

In Changsha we shared a floor with a host of other adoptive families as well--but we seldom heard them! Just now I could hear a few different babies wailing away. AND we can hear wild music from the river boats out our window. NOT exactly quiet. Ah, well. M.'s asleep.

Sleep Notes (cont)

Well, that was probably our best night of sleep. We went to bed before 10 and woke up around 5. These so-called mattresses are just ridiculous. It's seriously like having a piece of ply wood with a mattress pad on top. geesh. And every morning we wake up ravenously hungry--so it's impossible to go back to sleep.

All in all, we're doing ok though.

M. Sleeps like a dream She fell asleep promptly at 8PM again and is still sleeping despite our early morning activity. WOW! Thank the LORD!

We suppose that could change at the drop of a yuan, but we don't THINK it will and we're really grateful.

--R

Sleep Notes (cont)

Well, J got over six last night, but not solid. I got a reasonably solid five.
I feel pretty good; J. not so great. She's not looking forward to another plane ride late this afternoon.

Sleep Notes

Since going to bed at 11PM EST on September 6th, until this present moment I estimate* that we've had 13.5 hours of sleep, or about 4.5 hours a night. In spite of that, as we wrap up our first full day in China, we don't feel too bad. [I type this as J. is zonked out on the bed :-)] It seems to hit you in waves. You feel OK and next thing you know you're about to do a nose dive into your Jasmine tea. Part of our group got here a day earlier, and they say we should feel great tomorrow.

--R.

*estimate excludes all naps under half an hour

Hard Time Sleeping

For a good week after we got our travel dates, we just couldn't put together a good night of sleep.
One night, I woke up at 1:30am and couldn't fall back to sleep for a good two hours.

Another night, it was J's turn to wake us both up. All the other nights were filled with fitful dreams of travel and adoption.

You've perhaps heard of weird "pregnancy dreams?" These were like that. Really bizarre.
Thankfully, we've finally put a night or two together of decent sleep again.

I described my own feeling to J and others like this: It's like a wild mix between the excitement of a kid on Christmas Eve and the horror of one who has a final exam at 8:00am for which he's never studied.