It has been difficult to blog here this year. We haven't had any Internet in our apartment until a few days ago, and the WiFi is still dodgy at best. I also brought the wrong adaptor over, so I have stunning photos to upload but won't be able to until I get home- boo! I've stolen some pictures from my parents' FB pages when they were here with us early on, from my SIL's iPhone, and have taken a few with my iPad which are not all that great but will do for now.
On to my first tale.
Sometimes it's hard to believe we are back in Scotland again, and with TWO kids in tow this time. Some might question our sanity at traveling internationally with two children five and under. I know I do.
When we brought Nicholas over when he was 15 months, he did extraordinarily well adjusting to the time change. He stayed up all night on the plane which was not fun at all, but fell asleep the following evening in Scotland, awoke the next morning and was back on a normal sleep schedule of napping and sleeping at night. Rhys' transition has not gone as smoothly. He also stayed awake all night on the plane, fascinated by the lights, buttons, tvs, etc. He fell asleep when we arrived at my in-law's townhouse in the mid-afternoon and I woke him after a few hours with the hopes of putting him to bed in the evening at a semi-regular hour. It worked pretty well, with a few hiccups here and there with him waking up a little early and taking longer naps. Well, about a week or two ago Rhys woke up at 5:30am. Then 4:45am, then 5:15am, and so on. Rhys is slowly exhausting us waking up tremendously early, and not going back to sleep, then taking huge, monster naps (think: 3/3.5 hours) to make up for arising so early. One day, we returned back to the apartment with this love letter from the people staying in the apartment below us:
This infuriated me. First of all, they are staying in apartments (we are on the top floor, they are on the middle). That implies that you will be around, or in their case surrounded by, other people. If you want it to be so tranquil, stay in a cottage, or in a Bed and Breakfast with other people who probably aren't going to have young families. Secondly, there are no carpets or rugs in here, I can't do anything about that, so yes, you are going to hear my one year old pad around, and the five year old, too. And normal activities, like rolling a car along the floor, are going to sound loud on hard wood floors. Lastly, and most importantly, do you think I want my baby up at 5 freakin' 20 in the morning?!
This is when I really wish my mother were still here. (She was here with us the first week of our vacation). She would have knocked on their door and given them what they had coming. (This is a woman who while I was learning to drive a clutch (all we had were manual cars growing up, we had no choice) in high school bellowed out the window "SHE'S LEARNING HOW TO DRIVE!" (insert fist shaking) when someone honked at me at a light when I stalled. Or when my son had surgery at 3 weeks old, my mom told the other mom who was yammering away in our shared hospital room what amounted to shut up, that my son and I had just fallen asleep. She doesn't mince words, and isn't afraid of confrontation.
Now, there is generally a difference between what one thinks in one's head, and what one actually does. And being as though my husband and I are fairly nice and considerate people (passive-aggressive maybe) my poor husband would go in and answer Rhys' cries whether it was at 1:30am, 3:30am, 4:15am not wanting to disturb the neighbors. He has driven him up and down the A9 as not to upset them! Well, now I'm afraid Rhys is waking up out of habit. He has not slept until a reasonable hour (at this point I'd consider 5:30 reasonable) for the last week or so, or whatever it's been, it's all a blur now, which means his parents haven't either.
They checked out today, so wish us luck tonight, or rather this morning with the crying it out, because for the love of G-d nothing else has worked.
Endnote: this doesn't help sleep either. It is light approximately 21 hours of the day here.
Any guesses at the time this photo was taken?
The answer is 9:30pm. I was emailing my best friend and turned around to snap this shot to illustrate the same point. The skies were cloudy too, imagine had it been sunny.
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