Jet Lagged

I had been so worried about the flight, I didn't fully realize how difficult getting over the jet lag would be. I kind of figured that once we kept the kids up during the day one day, they would sleep at night and things would go pretty smoothly.

We arrived at the Marriott in Manama around 11pm Thursday night local time, but most of the family had just had a full night's sleep, so Dave romped with the kids while I went to bed for a few hours. The company had only booked the hotel for one night since our home was ready for us to move in, but there was no way we were moving from that room so quickly. We were all in a dead sleep the next afternoon when the maids came in thinking we would be gone.

Friday evening when we all finally woke up we took a drive to our new home. We thought we'd just look around outside and peek through the windows but when we said hello to security at the gate, he just handed over the keys, so we got to go inside and have a look. The next morning at 9am we met with Jackie, the housing coordinator from Oxy, to officially let us in. They supplied us with basics until our air shipment was to arrive (that's another story...), like towels, kitchen wares, vacuum, etc. Everything is good but the mattresses are SUPER uncomfortable. I am so so glad we were advised to bring over our own.

Dave had to work the next day (Sunday) and the next couple days are kind of a blur... They were so difficult with Davey up all day (he really adjusted pretty well) and Charlie up all night. And I had to let Dave sleep since he had to work and needed to begin his new job well. Luckily we had a great surprise when Dave got to work and learned that he would have Wed-Sun off for a combination of National Day and the Islamic New Year. I was so glad to only have to endure 3 days of that on my own.

We heard from others that Charlie would pretty much never adjust on his own, so even though he was up all night, we began to force him to be awake for the next several days. It felt so mean to wake him up for the day at 8am when he had only just gone to sleep at 4:30am most mornings. But we survived and by the time Dave went back to work on Monday we were in pretty good shape.

Now we seem much more in the swing of things, thank goodness. And the kids are on a pretty good schedule. Davey has taken a good nap each day and Charlie has stopped screaming every time we enter his room. The one thing I'm having to adjust to is Charlie's later bedtime, now between a7 and 8pm when it was 6pm before. I didn't think I'd like it since I enjoy having the evening "to myself" but I must say I'm also enjoying sleeping until Davey wakes at 7 or 7:30am.