Samoa Part 1

This is at the airport on the way out of New Zealand. It's not a great picture, but I like it. She's eating "chippies" for dinner. They fed us again on the airplane too. (But you can never be sure these days if they'll feed you enough...) This like cutie right here? She decided that bedtime was for losers. She FINALLY shut her eyes as we touched down in Samoa - around midnight. You know that fierce whisper you get when you're so frustrated with the child, but you're around people. The "You-so-had-better-go-to-sleep-soon" whisper? Yeah. We were well into that territory.

Okay, the following story is not for the faint of heart. Or the squeamish. You moms can handle it. I knew the diaper was getting to the end of it's "capabilities" and needed changing soon. But between takeoff and getting distracted and being served a meal, it got put off. I also only had one with me (not sure how I managed that one!!!) and I wanted to be sure she didn't poop in the new one. I realized she was stinky, so we piled the meals up and I took her to the bathroom to change her.

As I set her down on the changing table (at least there was one!) I saw something on my sleeve. Poo. Lots of it. The "I'm-verging-on-being-sick" consistancy. Oh no! I have no extra clothes for me or her. AK! (Again, what was I thinking???) Let's just say that several wipes, paper towels later I carried her back to our seats with a plastic bag I got from the flight attendants. She wore only her jeans (Yah, the JEANS were okay, the TSHIRTS were not. Get the picture???) and I (by grace) had worn a short sleeve over a long sleeve - so I still had a shirt to wear. (Though that was a complicated maneouver getting them off without "spreading" the issue.

And so began my time in Samoa.

These two are at an optometry clinic. The second one... she's about ready to go to sleep. She laid down twice of her own doing - probably something to do with the missed sleep the previous nights!!!

Sleep issues. Hmmm... I'll share with you, because you've suffered too. Over the course of 5 days she skipped out on 16 hours of sleep. That means, she went to be around bedtime, and then at 1-2am she woke up. And stayed awake for SEVERAL hours every night. We shared a tiny room (by ourselves, so that was good at least) so we were up - no sleeping. Ak! She continued to skip sleep for most of the nights we were there. I was dying. I was waking up with her and literally begging her to go back to sleep. I did everything. Believe me, my mother and I ran down the list of possibilities, tough love, movies on the laptop, reading books, praying, singing, letting her cry, playing with toys, etc etc etc - nothing worked.

It turned out (we checked 3x, but finally saw it the 3rd time, she had a blazing ear infection - for the first 10 days of the trip. After the antibiotics kicked in she started sleeping better). But 10 days of messed up sleep patterns. I was about falling over.

Can anyone tell me what this is?

10 pts if you do.