Up All Night

How do you keep from raising your voice all the time?  Do you try?  Can you?  How many questions can I ask in the first thirty words of this post?

N is 4 1\2 going on 15.  She seems to have reached peak annoying for me at the moment.  I find myself trying to find excuses for her to have to go to bed early.  This is not usually that difficult as part of her problem at the moment is that she is exhausted pretty much all the time.

Sick and Tired

There is nothing that can make you feel more worthless than having a poorly child.  Your job as a parent is to care for, bring up and love your children.  But when they get ill, that goes out the window.  The love is still there of course, but it is impotent.  It seems as though no intervention is enough.  None of the normal things work, not the tickling, or the funny faces, or even the throwing in the air, normally guaranteed to elicit a giggle, all fall flat in the face of the illness.  In the end, all you are left with is a lifeless little boy struggling to lift his head.

Until last night. (This post was written many months ago, S would be most upset if I was telling everyone he was ill yesterday, he wasn't.)  S had been suffering all day.  Some sort of virus apparently which has left him caring about nothing other than sleeping and a new cup with some of the least watered down juice he had ever tasted.  There had been moments of brightness, but they were often followed by tears and more lethargy.  One of those days when you can only hope to make him comfortable and help him go back to sleep really.

We put him down to sleep at around seven and he went down really well, no moaning at all, he just rolled over and slipped off, dosed up with the miraculous Calpol.  And that was that.  We heard nothing from him, until about 4 hours later.  Around 11 o’clock, just as we were getting ready to go to bed he started up, demanding attention immediately.  Now, we had got into a bit of a bad habit with N of bringing her into our bed whenever she put up a real fuss.  More than about forty five minutes (sorry, small typo there, should read four to five minutes) of crying would get her a free pass into the space between us.  Which would rapidly expand into the space across 75% of the middle of the bed.  It was amazing that even when she fit very comfortably within the confines of her cot put her in our bed and she was able to expand her limbs to fill the available space. 

Having had a number of rough experiences with N’s incredibly jabby elbows and knees, and feet, and head, we were determined not to go down the same route with S.  This determination has been helped by the fact that he is, in general, a much better sleeper than N ever was at his age (clearly making a bid for favourite child from an early age, sensible chap). Even when he is not asleep he is happy to just chill out in his cot, presumably plotting further ways to make himself the favourite, rather than screaming his head off, which was N’s reaction whenever we took her near her bedroom. And we had managed not to give in to him until yesterday.  He was awake, he was poorly, he was crying, we were just about to go to bed, our defences were down and suddenly there he was, lying drowsily between us, in his Grobag, like a little motionless marshmallow (as opposed to all the big motionful marshmallows you see).  It was all going so well, there were no spear like appendages trying to poke holes in my abdomen just a sad sorry little boy who didn’t look like he had any energy at all. 

And then it was like someone flicked a switch (I imagine it was B but I can’t confront her without solid proof, which I haven’t got yet).  He had been ill just seconds before, lying in bed, but suddenly he was up on all fours grinning like a maniac (imagine a tiny, very cute Joker) and rocking back and forwards like he was dancing to a Sabrina Carpenter song.  He was giggling and grinning, which of course meant B started laughing back at him (Exhibit no 1.) which encouraged him even further and from a sick quiet little boy, who I thought was going to give me a nice peaceful night’s sleep he changed into the performing comedian he can be.  It really is impossible not to laugh when he gets like that, and he knows it.  Finally I gave in too and all three of us were chuckling away together. 

Until it stopped, and he slumped down, worn out by his exertions.  I turned away again, silence having been restored, to resume my slumber undisturbed, but, alas, it was not to be, for behind me I heard the unmistakeable sound of my wife sniggering away, followed by a giggle from the same baby that, mere moments before, had been on the verge of sending himself to sleep.  Against my better judgement I rolled over again to find that he boy was doing the same ridiculous dance, which was abruptly followed by him diving across the bed and burying himself into B’s neck, lying there for a minute, still giggling away, and then giving a massive yawn and putting his fingers into his mouth to send himself off to sleep.  Unfortunately B was still laughing, which is an activity which involves more movement than you might imagine (it’s like her shoulders have got their own tiny, inexplicable trampoline), which meant that S couldn’t get comfortable and so was soon off again, jiving away to the secret beat only he could hear. 

At this point I had to step in as there had been far too much frivolity for what was quickly becoming tomorrow.  I casually pointed out that if he was now so cheerful as to be doing his best Coco the clown impression perhaps he could go and entertain his teddies in his cot and leave us to maybe get some sleep.  Nothing too pushy you realise, just sowing the seed you understand.  Well, seed sown, I realised my work there was done and again rolled over.  At this point all went quiet and it became clear that S had heard me and understood.  I was able to get him back into his cot where he cheerfully began regaling his teddies with stories of exactly how big a pushover mummy and daddy were.  I left him to it and went back to bed and didn’t hear him all night until about quarter to five.  Today he has been much worse than he was yesterday, even more lethargic and with no energy at all, but for a few minutes last night he was back to his own cheerful self again and it was wonderful.  Now I just need to find the switch B flicked and keep it on, until then I’ll just go back to being the man who gives the cuddles, and who always has the love.

A Cry for Help

(This post was originally written last Tuesday, but has been delayed due to excessive busy, as well as lack of sleep and general bad temperedness, read on for the details)

Wit’s End - Where jokes go to die.

It’s a story that will be familiar to many of you, but here is my own version of the old classic, “Help, I’m the parent of a two year old who refuses to sleep and won’t do anything she’s told.”

As with all good stories this one starts with a change in the weather.  The hot weather has really messed us up unfortunately, none more so than the little tyrant.  Although it has been a particularly hard time for my wife who is (I hope I get this right) 28 weeks pregnant, but whose bump, according to the funky little bump chart measurement thingTM (I am available for all your technical term needs) is actually measuring about 3 weeks bigger than it should be.  This,  coupled with the heat (did I mention it was warm?), has made things extra difficult for B looking after the monster.  

Another side effect of the hot weather, which has been really quite warm, is that N has not been going to sleep.  I choose to assume it is the hot weather as then I can lull myself into the, probably foolish, hope that once it cools down a bit this will improve.  I have devoted words on this blog already to the subject of my daughter’s exceptional sleep regime so I won’t rehash that, except to say that things are in no way as bad as they were for the first 10 months of her life, which we affectionately refer to round here as the lost months, and I am very grateful that I have bumped my sleep average up to about 6 hours a night now, positively blissful.  However, gratitude aside, it is getting just a little wearing that whilst N will sleep all the way through now, which sounds great, we need to drill down into those numbers just a little.  Let me especially highlight the Time of First Sleep (TOFS) number which is currently fluctuating between 9 and 10:30pm.  Which when you compare that with the Time of First Awakening (TOFA) number of 5-6am leaves you with an equation which spits out the nightmarish number for Length of Sleep for Two Year Old (LOSFTYO) of around 8 hours.  This may be enough for you and me, it is not enough to prevent my two year old daughter from turning into a whining, exhausted, misbehaving wreck of a little girl.

We have tried a number of things to solve the problem.  From cutting out the afternoon sleep which she has still been having - doesn’t work as she won’t go to sleep much earlier and she becomes impossible to deal with by about 4 o’clock if we try that - to trying to get her to sleep in longer in the mornings - also hasn’t work as she has a built in Daddy’s Going Downstairs, Must Go Down With Him (DGDMGDWH, I think she needs to work on her acronyms) alarm which goes off whenever she hears me creeping downstairs.  Unfortunately she is just at the moment in a cycle where she is not getting enough sleep, is hot and bothered, and is driving us both crazy.

Anyway, this is all a fairly long winded preamble to letting you know that for a while this blog may have to come with a Danger, Lack of Jokes (DLOJ) warning sign while we all wait for things to cool off.  Oh and hopefully this hot weather will stop as well.

Perchance to Dream (Chance would be a fine thing)

There’s a hushed silence the first time you bring your newborn baby in through the front door.  No matter who’s with you there is just a moment when you can’t really believe what has just happened, you have brought your baby home.  The silence doesn’t last long of course, soon enough everything returns to bustle and movement and noise, but for a brief moment everything is wonderful and the future stretches out in front of you full of possibility and joy. 

It is at this point that it hits you.  You are the proud owner of one unused child, although it quickly becomes clear that the transaction hasn’t quite worked out the way you thought it had and you’re looking for the receipt to find out exactly who it was who did the purchasing.