Sleeping like a baby

Shh. Hush-hush...

This weekend, Hannah decided that I needed to get more practice in putting Arya down for the night. I panicked a little, resisted the urge to tell her that her hopes and aspirations exceeded all practical likelihood (conceptually hilarious, but in actuality a terrible thing to do to a child) and then gave it the old college try.

I gave Arya a bath after dinner, then we watched some Pajanimals (a quartet of young Muppets visit magical lands on their flying beds to get help dealing with life's little reversals from characters such as a neurotic octopus, a cripplingly insecure bear and a narcoleptic rabbit who teaches yoga), she drank some milk, and we went into the nursery to settle.

She will also sometimes sleep on the go.

She kicked off immediately, having expected Mummy to come and put her down. I persevered; she wailed and tried to claw the door open.

I did We're Going on a Bear Hunt, and round about the snowstorm she walked over to where I was sitting next to the bed, stopped, went back, picked up her milk bottle, handed it to me, sat on my lap - still crying - held out her hands for the bottle, took it, popped it in her mouth, lay back, rearranged herself a couple of times to get comfortable, stopped crying and swiftly went to sleep.

Whaling is her new craze.

The next few nights were even better, although the last couple she's been terribly hot. I feel accomplished as a Dad.

With the heat and all she didn't sleep terribly well over the weekend, so neither did we, but last night was a real red letter night. I put Arya down in her cot at 8:30. We brought her in with us at about 11:30, not because she was awake but because we'd been watching Pan's Labyrinth and were having trouble shaking the fear that she'd be carried off by a faun, or a Spanish fascist.

Not kidding; all the time with this thing.

Despite the move, she didn't wake up, and as best we can tell, she actually slept right through the night for the first time.

In other news, we went back to see Muppets Most Wanted again, between swimming and games. She is still very mobile around the cinema and bless the Cambridge cinema going public for their tolerance.

Elsewhere, she's picked up the habit of leaning back over the edges of seats. It's adorable, although it did take a worrying turn this morning, when it became a full-on Lois Lane pick-up/attention-getter as she flung herself back across mummy's lap and towards the empty space in front of the sofa.

Day of the Dad (the remake)

 Another crazy weekend, as we headed up to Nottingham for a game, with Arya along for the ride. As you can see in the picture on the left, she basically had a good time, although waking up at 2230 after forty minutes sleep, to find that I'd carried her downstairs and out onto the patio full of people because the hotel had a fire alarm, was a bit of a shocker.

Monday was a sort of recovery day, but as Hannah needed to go into London, I was on solo care duty for the first time in a while (since Andrew is working now, he can't bring Arya over on Friday afternoons). I made a rookie error early, putting my back to Arya in order to type to someone that I didn't have time to talk, but things went pretty well otherwise.

"What hamster?"

First up, we went into Ely to do some food shopping, then came back and had a salad lunch, as it was a particularly hot day. The salad had beetroot in, so I then changed her outfit completely, forgetting that I would be feeding her pasta with tomato sauce in the evening.

Sadly, I failed to get a shot of her looking ultra-serious with a tomato pip stuck to her nose, which was adorable.

She napped for about an hour in the morning, but would not go off in the afternoon, even when we took a walk out around some of the nicer parts of the village.

"Greenery on the arch? Isn't that a little
pagan?"
"Why, yes she is."

I think she was slipping down a little in the pram, although I'm not sure how to fix that.

The upshot of this was that by dinner time she was wicked tired, and it was a struggle to put her down for long enough to cook. Despite this, she was willing to go and stand on the other side of the kitchen while I opened the oven (my wonderful, smart girl; she actually walked across because I asked her to go) and then made a fine stab at eating her pasta, even if she was a little confused about whether she liked it or not.

"Do you like that?"
"No."
"Are you sure? You've cleared your plate and there's nothing on the floor or in your lap."
"No."

Bless her.

Also, check out that top in the picture. There was a total of one sauce mark on that thing when she was done, and that a little one.

 What struck me most was the energy she has. Even exhausted she was still lively when I was almost falling asleep with her on my lap, watching some programme with Justin Fletcher dressed as a pirate.