Red-Eye Flight

We have made it through the Red-Eye Flight. We are in Rome.

What can I say about the red-eye flight? I think they should give it a name more befitting of its horrendousness. Red-Eye-Popping-Out-Of-Your-Skull-from-Exhuastion Flight. That's be more accurate.

Not for the singles out there. Those people had it DOWN. There were a few rows of empty seats in the back of the airplane which I scouted out early, and was planning to take over when the flight took off. Except that somehow the singles beat me. By the time the seatbelt sign turned off, the singles were already lying down over all three seats, covered by blankets and wearing actual SLEEP MASKS. Shit, the people don't screw around. And around halfway through the flight, I started to regret that I'd dropped the ball. The sleeping did not go well.

First off, I had this totally erroneous thought that because we took off at 5pm and arrived at 8am, that we'd have a whole long night to sleep, so it wouldn't be a big deal if the kids waited til midnight to fall asleep. Once on the plane, however, I realized that we took off in NY time and arrived in Italy time, and we were actually totally being robbed of a night's sleep. This is when I started getting serious about shut eye. We divided and conquered - David took charge of Seconda in the two seats in front and I was in charge on Primo in the two seats behind.

We tried everything. Putting Primo's feet on top of the trays and his head on my lap. Putting his head on the trays and his feet on my lap. Giving him both our seats while I hovered in the aisle. Finally, with 3 hours left til touchdown, I hissed, "If you don't go to sleep right now you're going to be up all night and then want to sleep when its morning time and I won't let you! I'll pinch you awake!" Which made him cry and shriek, "DON'T PINCH ME MOMMY!" waking all the other people who had been asleep for hours. Penitent, I decided to try one last thing -- laying the blankets down on the floor of the aircraft between our seats and David and Seconda's seats in front of us, and Primo lay down there, diagnoally with his head at my feet and his feet at David's feet. That did the trick and I managed to get a whole two and a half hours of sleep. TOTALLY enough for me to manage a crazy 3 and 5 year old who've been up all night, in a foreign country.

But now we're here and thanks to the jet lag, my kids are both going to bed at 2am local time every night. You know what they say - when in Rome . . .