Jetlag Blues

I just got a very sweet email from our friends Alex and Charmagne in Saudi Arabia checking in with us since we haven't posted for a looong time. Well, as those of you descended from the Spande or Pleuss bloodlines know, we've just returned from nearly a month in the US. We had been planning to go back in July, but Nathan's grandmother was very ill and so we decided to move our trip up. Nathan and Ellie left on Monday, March 27 and went directly to Albert Lea. Ben and I stayed an extra five days so I wouldn't have to take so much time off work, and we left on Saturday, April 1 and met Nathan and Ellie in Madison.

As it turned out, Nathan just missed seeing his grandmother one last time. She died while he was en route to the US. But he was able to attend her funeral and to lend emotional support to his dad and grandfather. Everyone really appreciated having Nathan around, though perhaps they appreciated the comic relief and distraction provided by Elena even more. Halfway through the funeral, the pastor stood up and approached the pulpit to deliver the sermon and Ellie said in a very loud voice, "Is that guy going to talk again?" leading to some much-needed laughter in the family pews.

Ben and I had a terrible time getting to the US. He caught a stomach bug just before we got on the plane, and managed to throw up on all but one of our four flights. He didn't sleep hardly at all on our overnight at Bangkok, and the one-bedroom suite I had booked for that night got mistranslated into a regular hotel room. Not wanting to turn on the lights while he was failing to fall asleep, I ended up eating my room service dinner in the bathroom with the plate balanced on the lid of the toilet. Then at 3:40 am, it was time to get up, get packed, discover that Ben had a fever of 103, and leave the hotel by 4:30 am to make our 6:40 am flight. Ben cried the whole way in the cab, while the cabbie refused to use his meter and tried to get me to pay double to normal fare. The city was dark, the streets were abandoned, and I thought that the route he was taking looked like the way to the airport, but I wasn't certain. I held my ground and he eventually turned on the meter--losing out on the cash he would have earned had the meter been on from the beginning.

At the airport, I struggled to push a luggage cart and stroller simultaneously while Ben fussed and refused to sleep. After check in we paced the terminal in hopes that the motion of the stroller would lull him to sleep. It did, finally....about 10 minutes before boarding. We were able to pre-board and I found a friendly gate agent who agreed to keep an eye on Ben at the jetway for a minute so I could install his car seat and then transfer a hopefully still sleeping Ben into his seat. But when I came back to get Ben two minutes later, the gate agent was gone, the stroller was gone, and Ben was gone. It felt like a seen from a movie. When it sunk in a few seconds later that this was real, I was of course rather upset, and the poor Thai flight attendants were completely at a loss as to what to do with this western woman showing so much emotion and speaking so quickly. Fortunately, a very nice American flight attendant stepped in and led me to Ben, who was right where I left him--on the other jetway that led to our plane.

The rest of the flight was less eventful (well, aside from Ben periodically getting sick). I'm not usually a worrier, but the combination of sick child, lack of sleep and long journey had me concerned. Ben still had a fever, was completely lethargic, and was having trouble keeping even liquids down. I really wondered if I shouldn't stop in some city and have him looked at by a doctor. But fortunately I met a wonderful nurse from Wisconsin who was on both our Bangkok-Tokyo and Tokyo-Chicago flights, and she reassured me that he would be fine for the rest of our trip. So we arrived, cranky, two hours late, exhausted, and with Ben still sick, in Madison. Things could only get better.

We have lots of photos from our time in Wisconsin and Minnesota that we'll try to post in the next few days, so I'll save those stories for later. Suffice it to say it was a very busy time packed with visits to family (the kids saw 4 grandparents, 3 aunts/uncles, 3 great-grandparents, 14 great-aunt/uncles, and 9 cousins by my count), shopping, and lots of time at playgrounds and other kid destinations.

Now we're back. The flight back was not terrible, but I've learned that the harder part comes in adjusting to the jetlag. Nathan is like an anti-jetlag superhero. He can will himself awake until a normal bedtime, get up with the kids if necessary, and fall asleep whenever he needs to. For the first four nights back in Cambodia, Ben and Ellie would take long naps in the afternoon, be really tough to wake up, fall asleep at dinner, and then wake up at about 3am. I was usually up anyway, having my own jet lag issues, so I rebuffed most of Nathan's offers to watch the kids and stayed up with them myself. Last night they finally slept until 5:30am, and just woke up at 5:30 today. Close enough to normal. Hopefully that last hour of sleep will come this week. Now, if I could just get on a normal schedule! After staying up until 9:30pm for the first time since we returned, I woke up just before 3 and haven't been able to get back to sleep. Argh!