Jet lag. Boo.

So I just finished this book about French child rearing called Bringing Up Bébé.  Interspersed with some mildly humorous anecdotes and a few thought-provoking observations, the author explains the French phrase "faire ses nuits."  The French use this phrase, which means "to do his or her nights" to ask when your infant has begun to sleep through the night.

The point in the book is that the French have enculturated themselves to pause before responding to children.  It teaches the Gallic babes to self-soothe and sleep through the night at ages much younger than our Yankee, heathen children.  Continuing the pause teaches them to be self sufficient, team players and creative problem solvers.  Not bad for a parenting style that I'd refer to as "slacking."  I'm being facetious--it does have merits--but ignoring your kid is so non-current-US-Mom-approved it's just not funny.  We go so overboard in the other direction.  Truthfully a middle ground between the Frenchies and my style would be a great solution.

Back to the topic: Helena is not faireing her nuits here in France yet.  Neither am I.  She stayed awake for most of the overnight flight and slept most of yesterday.  I slept very little on the flight, napped a wee bit during the day and then passed out, exhausted, at 10:30 PM.  She shuffled into and out of our room for a few hours until finally, I cuddled her to sleep (while completely awake) at 2 AM, about two hours ago.

So now she's asleep, along with the rest of the family, and I'm chatting with you.


Jet lag's a funny thing.  I never had it much when I was younger.  My strategy has always been to get on local time ASAP.  I used to avoid napping and stay up until a reasonable time that first day, even if it made me miserable.  Bryan takes the "sleep when you body wants to" strategy to extremes.  I always thought that counter-intuitive. 

But he's sawing logs and I'm typing, so who's the dope now?