The V-berth hogs.

Little people wiggle.  I mean they wiggle a lot.  Myles is no exception.  We have slept aboard a few times this season.  Last night I stayed aboard with him on my own.  Just the little guy and me.  It was a great cool night for sleeping in the cabin and I had the fan's turned off by 9pm because it was starting to get a bit chilly.  I joined Myles in the V-berth around 10:30 he was out cold and on his side of the bed all was good until it started raining at 2AM.  I pulled the hatch closed over us then realized I had left the fan outside in the cockpit.  Reluctantly I dragged myself out of the berth.  I pulled the fan in put in one of the drop boards and replaced the mosquito netting by the time I got back.  Munchkin had moved on to my spot turned 180 degrees and pulled his blanket along with him. (See photo)  I managed to squeeze back in and scoot him over a bit.  It turned out to be a restful night and the rain led to a great morning.  Hopefully this cool weather holds and we will get B's to join us this weekend. 

Juicing up in the AM before heading home for Breakfast.

Sea sickness and the one year old

 

This season has been a bit rough so far. Myles are one year old has grown into sea sickness. Last year he was so little he slept most of the time that we sailed. This year he is up and at it most of the time.

The first two times out this season he has got quite sick. The first time we thought perhaps it was just a bad day for him. It surly started that way. As we left the harbor he was down in the V-Beth sleeping. We had the forward hatch open for air flow and to keep him cooler. Well all was good until we came the the harbor mouth. A large wave broke over the front of the boat and down the hatch it went. Myles was less than thrilled to be woken up from his morning nap in such a rude way. He was soaked head to toe after getting him cleaned and dried off he ended up throwing up all over his Mom. Not fun and not fun to clean up. We figured this had been a bad day and perhaps the sickness had been caused by a number of events perhaps over heating in the lifejacket or the iron supplement vitamin he had been taking.

The second time out we where far more cautious keeping him on deck talking to him and no vitamin's to mess with and a cooler life jacket. Well he got sick again. This time we knew our little one has started to grow up. He is walking now and his balance is not quite there yet but apparently he is now susceptible to sea sickness. We can only figure it has to do with his inner ear fluids and hopefully he will out grow it as he gets older.

What to do? We began the search we talked with other cruisers and family members about their experiences with children aboard and sea sickness. We goggled. Myles is to young for Dramamine or any other medication. Any parent with a child under the age of two knows by now that most childrens medications have been pulled from the market and sea sickness meds are no exception. We looked at the herbal market but those to are for children over the age of two years. Then we found out that they make wrist bands for children. My wife used sea sickness wrist bands through her pregnancy to deal with morning sickness so we where already aware of them and the positive affects she had with them made us decide this would be a great route for us to try out.

I am happy to report that they appear to be working successfully. We have sailed with Myles twice since purchasing the bands. If you are not familiar with these bands they are elastic bands that have plastic buttons on them. They are placed on the wrists and if you start to feel queezy you simply push the buttons. This button presses on a pressure point in the wrist which helps with the sea sickness. Obviously Myles is only up to about 30 words at this point and so he can't communicate how he is feeling but we keep a close eye on him. (As we always do when out on the water.) If he begins yawning this is a good tell, things aren't going well so we push the little buttons and start talking to him about things on the horizon. We sail off Saugatuck and there is a large weather ball up on the top of Mt. Baldy. This has been a great point of reference and the topic off our last two sailing trips as he love to say the word "Ball" ... Any ball, water tower or weather station will do for him they are all round and the are all balls in his vocabulary.  Here are a few more pics of the little guy showing off his new wrist bands. 

And this is the Distress button.

 Milk is good.

Tied in at the companion way do pad locks float?