It is always weird losing 6 hrs of your day! I was wondering how tough it would be to adjust to east coast time. My philosophy is don’t start shifting bedtime in advance, just exhaust yourself on the day of travel and you’ll wind up feeling tired at the right time the next day. That basically worked out except for the puking incident yesterday morning. Instead of waking Sam up when I otherwise might have, I let him sleep in until noon (I slept until almost 11am myself). So he went to bed at normal time last night (our first full day in NJ) but woke up 2.5 hrs later thinking that was his nap and he was all set, raring to go at 11pm! I knew it would happen 🙂 I was prepared. Dave and I had just hung up from chatting about all the adventures, and we’d talked about how to handle a wide-awake toddler at midnight. Hmmm… Milk and a munchkin! Then a story and back to bed. Here’s an excerpt from my note to Daddy about how that went down…

Just after we hung up last night Pants woke up, talking. I went in to see him. He had his after-nap poop. So I changed it, and took him out for a munchkin and milk, which he readily agreed to. He is so cute. i said he could have milk with his munchkin, so he chose the munchkin he wanted then waited until I’d poured the milk and sat down with him before sinking that munchkin into his teeff. we read skippy jon jones in mummy trouble then talked for a while about it being a long night because it was a long trip. i explained that tonight we celebrated our first day on the east coast by getting up for milk and munchkin but that was only a special treat for the first night. then i said we had to do what the sun does – go to sleep when it goes to sleep, get up when it gets up. i told him he might have trouble falling asleep, but just to think happy thoughts about his trip, his tractors, everything else… and no talking or crying or waking grammie and grandpa or mommy. he agreed to all this, we sang our song, had kisses and put him back to bed. we were up only 20 min. i listened for him for a long time. he was quiet for 30 min, then tossed and turned for a bit, but i think after about an hour we were both asleep. it is 7am now and i popped awake. i decided to get up and do my usual routine even though it wasn’t a long sleep for me – 6.5 hrs? i’ll survive. he is such a good boy. his life skills are very advanced i think! being wide awake at night is tough for me! and to not talk or fuss? wow.

There is a cricket here in Dad and Marilou’s basement. It just hopped on my feet. It’s chirping loudly telling me to get out of its territory. I think I will comply!!! Better than a roach, which is what would have greeted me at home 🙂 We have also been chased by mosquitoes (Sammy and I walked/jogged 1/2 mile in 12 minutes last night with those bugs after us! Dad was amazed to see us return so fast!), and warned about poison ivy. All those things you forget about when you’ve been away.