So from an early age she was trained to be adaptable, which has stood us in good stead for overnight stays in strange places, and those summer trips back to the UK. We keep her bedtime routine extremely, rigidly, consistent which gives us free rein to conduct said routine pretty much wherever we want to. She gets milk with a story, a bath, one of a rather limited range of bedtime stories (the usual suspects: The Big Red Barn, The Going to Bed Book, etc), her beloved dog, and a song to fall asleep to. Whether she's in a hotel room, at a friends' place, or lying on the floor at the bulkhead of a 747 - okay, we skipped the bath that night - it's all the same to Lady P.
On our recent UK trip we put her adaptability to the test. Including flight UA934, a couple of nights when she was put to bed at my sister's so we could share babysitting, and an unscheduled night in a hotel, she went to bed in seven different beds within the space of a fortnight.
And only once did I get a glimmer of a suggestion that all this change was bothering her. It was the morning we woke up in a nice hotel room in Hampstead, and Lady P said 'What is this house?' with just a hint of a frown. I explained that we were holed up in a hotel because her projectile vomiting of the previous day had rendered us unsuitable house guests, and she nodded gravely, and we got on with our day.
Of course, even the most amenable, flexible of children can't ignore their body clock, and after two weeks in England Lady P remained on UK time for a few days. For the first time, today, she woke up at a California-appropriate time.
It's a good job she's such a good traveler because we're about to leave again. We're off to the East Coast tomorrow, for a few days of family and friend reunions and a wedding. We will be staying in a different place for four out of the five nights we are gone. Brace yourself, Lady P. But we will be packing The Big Red Barn, and the Going to Bed Book so I'm hoping for the best.
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| 'Helping' me pack |
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