It looks like a scene from an after school special.  A Mom passed out on the bed, unable to  get up, while the poor confused toddler is poking at her, pulling her arm, pleading with her to get up.

Only the woman on the bed hasn’t taken any drugs, or had anything to drink.  The woman on the bed is me, in the middle of the night, after flying over the Atlantic Ocean and then across Canada, with two children, under 2.5 years old.

It’s 1am local time, but my internal clock says it’s 9am; which means I’m long overdue to get some sleep.

My 2 year old is telling me to get up because she thinks it’s time for Cheerios, but my body is stuck to the mattress like I’ve been super-glued to the sheets.

There’s no way I can get up.  I tell her I just need a minute to rest my eyes.  She tells me she’s cool with that and I slip into a heavenly 38 seconds of deep, much needed sleep, until I’m awoken by her little pointer finger tapping on my forehead over and over, while she sings, “forehead, forehead, forehead.”

The tapping teleports me back to my adolescence when my older brother would pin me down, tap on my forehead the same way, telling me to ‘name 20 cereals’  and keep up the forehead banging until I rattled off every cereal that my teenage brain couple come up with.

Both were equally torturous!

After a couple hours of rocking, singing, humming and begging her to sleep, while I slip in and out of consciousness, my toddler’s eyelids finally close and mine come crashing down like the curtain on the final scene of a dramatic play.

Twenty minutes into what feels like the deepest sleep of my life and I hear my 6 month old screaming for her turn to get up.  Back to pulling my body from the sheets and willing my limbs to wake up so I can pick up my baby.

With my husband back in France, I’m temporarily a single Mom, dealing with an 8 hour time change and what has felt like two nocturnal babies, taking turns checking the whereabouts of my sanity limitations.

We’re back in Canada visiting my parents, who have of course stepped up to the plate to help with this insane sleep adjustment; but my daughters seem to be partial to their Grandparents spoiling them during the day, and their Mother pacing with them at night.

So, I ping-pong between the two of them like this for 7 or 8 nights.  Whoever said one day per hour of time change was pretty bang on.  Exhaustion, short patience, over eating, bloating, adult acne and wrinkles all seemed to be unpleasant side-effects of my major lack of sleep.

I’ve never longed for my husband so much in all my life.  I can’t wait to see him again.  I’ve been dreaming of his muscular arms, wrapped around….our daughters, while I sleep for hours on end behind the closed door of our spare bedroom, recovering from the exhaustion of sleepless nights and 3am start days.

Of course when we finally have our days and nights sorted out, there’s only a small window of time before we turn around and do it all over again.

I’m putting this in writing because I seem to have amnesia when it comes to traveling overseas by myself, with our children.

I miss being able to elbow my husband and say, “Your turn.”

If I had a million dollars I might be willing to give it to you if you could give me a solution to jet-lag on little people.

For the record, I don’t have a million dollars, so please, out of the goodness of your heart, just list any solutions in the comments below because I’m about to tackle the return flight home.

Sweet dreams mes amis.