Hi guys, Melissa here from CloudMom.
Um, I’m getting up my second video of the summer.
As I’ve been saying on the site, it’s been just such a busy time for us, especially
the month of May with five kids was just incredibly busy with all the end of the year stuff.
Recitals, concerts, graduations, I just really fell behind for the first time since I’ve
launched the site and fell behind my weekly video schedule which I feel really bad about.
But anyway, right now I’m uploading a video about our trip over here on the plane which
was the easiest one we’ve had thus far.
And I just wanted to um, start out the sort of summer videos, and I’m going to be doing
some also where I answer questions from viewers about baby stuff and kid stuff, but I just
wanted to quickly talk to you guys about battling jet lag, because this is really, really, tricky
and I think that the trick is to try to start off right and it’s never going to be an
easy couple of first few days if you’re traveling abroad to a place with a different
time zone.
But I wanted to sort of describe what has worked for us and what has not worked for
us.
Um, ok so we flew from New York to Spain, Spain, six hours ahead of New York.
So clearly that’s not going to be easy.
Number one tip I have is when you get on your plane or whatever, try to take, if you�re
flying to Europe, try to take a night flight and try to get those kids to sleep as many
hours as you can.
It’s not easy, um because the seats are often very, very small and there’s a lot
of lights on the plane and they wake everybody up early for breakfast so it’s really not
easy on a flight to Europe to get a like normal night’s sleep, but you can try to squeeze
in four or five hours.
So I let my kids watch one movie, I actually fed them before, they weren’t so interested
in the plane food anyway, I’d gotten a kids meal, the only thing they ate was the Oreos
and the Kit Kat, although you should try to limit the sugar.
But try to, you know, get on the plane, look at, you know figure the whole thing out, give
them a little time to like mellow out.
Try to bring sleep masks and see if they’ll put those on, and try to put them down for
bed, try to get them comfortable with, you know, a pillow or whatever it’s going to
be so that, you know, they can get to sleep.
Because most of the adults on the plane are eating dinner, watching a movie, and they
didn't turn the lights off for a good three plus hours which was not ideal for my kids
at least.
So anyway, number one, try to get them to sleep as early as possible, try to make them
comfortable during the night, a few extra pillows, blankets, that never hurt.
I actually had one like lying on the back of the other kid, the ones against the window
had the wall to lean against so that was helpful.
Ok, when we arrived, before when we’ve gone to Europe we’ve had like a two hour, um,
car ride in the morning we were going somewhere else, I always let the kids sort of nod off
during that because it was unavoidable, it’s still the morning.
But with this trip, our apartment is like 25 minutes away from the airport.
Once we got here, we were just out and about for the day.
I did not put the kids down to sleep, but I’ve heard from people that have done that,
that you put them down to sleep and they really want to sleep like five hours and they’re
waking up in the afternoon, and that for me is a disaster, they’re not starting out
on the right foot.
So I say as soon as you arrive the next day, you try to put your kids on a normal schedule,
keep them active, get out of the house.
Don’t stay home and put them in front of the TV.
What I did is I did that for like two hours because I had so much to unpack, but then
I made sure they didn’t nod off, we went to this place nearby where they’re like
playing tennis, swimming, and I just tried to keep them active all day.
We had lunch there, we swam, didn’t come until five o’clock, gave everybody a bath,
gave everybody dinner, and I tried to get everybody in bed by like eight o’clock.
Ok.
Next day was yesterday, I managed to get everybody up, they were very fussy and tired in the
morning, it was not a great morning for us but we made it through.
Last night it was hard to get them to bed, that was technically our second day here.
The boys did not want to go to bed.
Think about it for them, here, it’s eight o’clock but for them its three pm.
So that’s tricky, but I did get everybody to sleep by nine o’clock.
And then today we were up by like eight o’clock, and it was hard to get them up again, so that’s
my tip.
As soon as you can, you’re just trying to stick to a regular schedule.
No sleeping in until, you know, 12 pm unless your schedule is so flexible that it doesn’t
matter if you can do that.
And don’t keep them up until, you know, 12 midnight either because they’re not going
to be able to get up.
Like try to get them on as good a normal schedule as you can.
Another tip, limit the sugar, it never does me any favors at all in terms of getting kids
to bed at night, right?
And then another thing that is sort of probably getting too personal but I will tell you guys
honestly, so I arrived by myself, I don’t have any help lined up yet, I’m so lucky
to be able to do this, take this adventure with the kids but you know what, at the same
time it is hard.
It is hard to be out of your own environment, all these things happen, you feel sort of
unaccustomed to things, you know, we didn’t have any food in the fridge.
Actually the fridge for the place we rented then completely broke, the water tank fell
down, there’s like water all over the floor, and I felt like my boys weren’t helping
me, I felt totally frustrated, out of control.
I totally lost my temper, and I think one of the reasons that I lost my temper is that
I was putting way too much pressure on myself that things were going to work perfectly smooth.
We actually had swim lessons lined up this morning, we were half an hour late which was
driving me crazy, but you know what, I should have just let it go.
It’s five kids, they’re on a totally different time zone, and it’s only, you know, two
days after arrival.
So I would say, you’re on vacation, try to go with the flow a little bit.
Even if you have an itinerary, you fall a bit behind because of the jetlag, OK.
As long as you’re sticking to a regular schedule and trying from day one to get your
kids on a regular schedule, don’t be quite so hard on yourself.
Because when you do, when you’re that hard on yourself, then sometimes also, maybe you
guys are a better mother than me, but you can take your frustration out on your kids
and it totally ruins your day.
Like I’m not going to have a good day now because I feel like I was a terrible mother
this morning.
I really do, because I don’t like losing my patience with my kids.
Anyway, just a few thoughts on jet lag, and I’m going to be writing more videos this
week, getting back to hopefully at least a weekly or bi-weekly video schedule with postings
on all things baby, we’re going to have some brand stuff coming up with some cool
yoga clothes, different things on the site over the summer and some travel videos.
So thanks so much for sticking with me and for following CloudMom, I really appreciate
it.
I appreciate you guys more than I can ever say, and have an amazing day and I will see
you guys soon.