Couch Potato Traveller

My child has probably watched TV 80% of the last two days. Judge me all you want. We didn't use drugs, which we did consider.

Samara and I, along with my mom, flew from New York to Frankfurt and then to Singapore. A total of 24 hours, 28 door to door, and this is the first time that Samara's attention span included more than 2 minutes at a time of TV. Holy awesomeness. It changed our whole experience. Yes - my daughter was sitting on the seat, watching the same (ONE!) Elmo video that Singapore Airlines had in their system, eating potato chips out of a bag, giggling. I was explaining to the German couple next to us what a couch potato is.

All in all, though, Samara was amazing. I had more anxiety about this trip than...well I'm not sure what, but I really couldn't think about it before we left - travelling with a child this age is just completely not fun.

I had decided that we would go to New York the day before our trip to Singapore for two reasons - it would break up - remove about six hours from - the long trip, and also if there was winter weather or whatever, and our flight from Detroit was delayed, we would have another day to play with before our separate ticket back to Singapore. While we had a fabulous time in New York eating burgers, bagels and knishes and visiting Ellen and Davey, Eli, the whole Shiovitz clan (minus David), Jeremy, Terese and Max...it actually prolonged our trip. My amazing sleeper (my pediatrician has warned me that I'm not allowed to talk about sleeping with other moms) woke up EVERY hour and wouldn't sleep at all from 2:30 - 4:30am. This was Sam's SECOND night of her life where she wouldn't just SLEEP (the first was at Michigania). It was miserable. She ended up sleeping in bed with me and Savta. Oy ya yoy. This meant that I barely slept Thursday night, and our flight was at 8pm on Friday night - arriving on Sunday morning. That's three full nights of not sleeping. BRUTAL. I thought about not going back. I thought about just sending Sam with my mom. I thought about drinking a lot on the plane. Possibly locking myself in the bathroom. But in the end, Sam was amazing. She had about a total of 5-7 minutes of meltdown (which is pretty good for a 1.5 year old on a 24 hour journey).

From NY to Frankfurt we had two extra seats, and we could raise the armrest for her to sleep on the seat. Unfortunately I couldn't sleep, because she nearly rolled off twice, and I had to peer at her every couple of minutes (that whole maternal instinct thing is super inconvenient when you want to just sleep). She slept for about three hours on that flight, and she watched Elmo and played the rest. In Frankfurt she ran around like a crazy woman. She then slept in the ergo for about an hour until they made me take her out for take-off - and then she fell asleep in my lap (unheard of). She literally spent the whole next flight watching the same 45 minute show. She had a few runs up and down the aisle and up and down the stairs (thank the lord for spacious A380s), and she appreciated a good game of peek-a-boo with the people around us, but really - she was unbelievable.

Now - all I want to do is sleep. For a week. Good night.