Sleepy and ill

"Does anyone remember when Friday night
was date night?"

Hanna and Arya arrived latish on Friday. I moved Arya into bed, we sat down to watch some Arrow, and Arya woke up. The poor mite was streaming snot and struggling to breathe at times, so we sat up with her for a while and watched The Jungle Book again, then I took her off to bed and stayed with her through the night.

This meant waking at I know not when to change a wet nappy (and a wet duvet) and coping with a leaky bottle. It had to be that bottle, unfortunately, because Arya fixes on these things, especially when she's ill. She really got into it with Hanna about the bottle until I suggested she could have a small amount of milk, but in her big bottle, which she was fine with. Ultimately, I think it's the bottle that gives her comfort at the moment, more than the milk. Unfortunately, this means that she tends to cuddle it, even when that means the milk is leaking onto the bedclothes.

We skipped Tumble Tots, since none of us had had more than five hours sleep, probably less. It was a shame, but the potential for going a bit spare was too great.

Eeee!

Instead, we hit the shops in Ely, where we got gloves and a hat for Arya. The gloves have penguins on and tend to slip off her tiny hands, but the owl hat is adorable. We also got a tree, since Argos were selling a £35 six-footer for £12.

Arya insisted on walking all around Ely, and so it wasn't much surprise that she fell asleep in the car on the way back. She actually slept until three o'clock, when I woke her up and she had lunch - actually more like breakfast for her. Once she'd eaten, she asked if we could go shopping, so we popped out briefly. It was very cold and she was not all that happy, but soldiered on and was very good in the shop.

Later in the evening, and especially over dinner, she got quite stroppy, but she was very tired by then and, all things considered, she did amazingly well. Much to my chagrin, I had to put her in the car at 9 o'clock to go home, after she finally got to sleep at about 8.15. A part of the problem with getting her to sleep is that she wants to sit on my lap, and she just hangs too far over the edge in all directions these days. Another is that leaky bottle and the fact that she doesn't want to sleep on a wet bed, reasonably enough.

She loves that 'Mummy's Bear' had Daddy Luke's voice.

I shall miss her more than ever after a short weekend with her, and look forward to seeing her on Friday.

A Night at the Opera

"Look at me, damnit! I'm adorable!"

Arya arrived asleep on Friday, but was very pleased to see me on Saturday morning after a two week absence. She was very, very lively and mischievous, but rather sleepy once we'd been to Tumble Tots and were on our way to my parents for lunch. In all honesty, the timing was imperfect as we had to feed Arya something en route and she only ate a little lunch. She also rejected rice pudding with pears and chocolate sauce, a staple of my childhood containing three of her favourite foods, probably because it was all too mixed up for her. If we'd given her a block of chocolate, a pear and a bowl of rice, she'd probably have been golden.

Christmas.

We shopped in Wymondham Waitrose on the way home. I'd asked Arya what we ought to put on the shipping list and she, recognising the pad we use for takeaway orders, immediately responded 'Chick-chick curry;' so that was dinner.

Unfortunately, it had been a long day and Arya fell asleep in the car on the way home. This meant that getting her to sleep at bedtime was a long, slow process, especially when she decided that she wanted to go swimming now. She had a bath with Mummy - after being super upset about the hot water for a bit - and then we settled again, or tried to at least. It took a long time to settle her, although I'm glad to say that we didn't need Hanna to come in, just a lot of patience.

I am saddened to note that it is becoming much harder for her to fall asleep on my lap. It's her preferred position still, but she overhangs at both ends and can't get comfortable, and is big enough that it's hard on my back to support her.

'Selfie with cracker'

I went in with her overnight because she was coughing again, which meant that I was in the wrong room for my alarm and Hanna slept though it more or less (I'm not judging; I did the same thing this morning.) Fortunately, at just after seven o'clock Arya woke me up and, seeing that the heating had switched off after the morning blast, went and woke Hanna, and we made it in time for what turned out to be out last Water Babies swimming class. From now on, swimming will be unguided, but we've found the value of the formal lessons has been declining and, pound for pound she's getting more focus, discipline, fun and physical workout from Tumble Tots.

From swimming we went to breakfast, which she consumed with gusto. I eschewed my usual full English because Arya really wanted sausages, but they didn't have gluten free. It seemed mean, therefore, to eat sausages in front of her. Foolishly, I chose an alternative that came loaded with guacamole, but otherwise it was very good.

And then we went to the theatre, something we've been looking forward to a lot. Arya was very excited at the thought of going to see The Gruffalo live on stage, and she had a good time, I think, although she was at pains to assure us that 'I don't like the Gruffalo, I just like the mouse.' which is some sophisticated sentence structure and opinioning.  Audience participation is still a little beyond her, but she liked the songs, even if the nut puns and the Fox's Madness-inspired number went over her head.

Speaking of over her head, the woman behind kept tapping us on the shoulder to inform us that Arya was blocking her children's view. I did my best to encourage Arya not to wave her gruffalo on a stick too excitedly, but she's two and a half and frankly in a children's theatre performance you expect a certain amount of impaired visibility. If she'd asked why Arya was sitting on three booster cushions, I'd have told her 'because we were here on time so there were plenty left'. If she'd tapped Arya's shoulder I'd have power dived into the row behind. I'm glad no such negativity was necessary.

And then home, for some Jungle Book and Sarah and Duck. We offered Arya a choice of pizza or pasta for dinner. She chose pizza, and ate most of it. She also asked again for sausages and beans, so we had beans with sausages (many of these are gluten free, it turns out) and again, she ate a good chunk of what we gave her. After dinner we brushed our teeth and she went pretty much straight to sleep when I took her to bed.

She woke up a little as I was putting her in the car to go back to Martlesham, but she wasn't really with it. As always, I miss her already.

Tiredness

The pine cone has holes; it can therefore be
unlocked.

It's been another exciting weekend at Chez Ersatz, as a persistent cold has been messing with Arya's sleep cycle, and by extension her parents.

Hanna and Arya arrived on... Okay, I think it was Thursday night. Yes; Thursday night, and quite late, but Arya was awake when she arrived. I brought her in and got her to sleep pretty quickly, but she was poorly so I went in with her for the night. She was surprisingly chilled about letting me out to work, but I still came home early to look after my girls.

Friday night was heavy for... reasons, I guess. Okay, I'm going to be straight with you here; I'm pretty foggy on exactly what happened when. I know it was Saturday night when she woke up, crying out for Mummy and Daddy because she couldn't find Woody and Buzz. Now, she doesn't have a Woody or a Buzz Lightyear, so I guess we've progressed to a coherent dreaming stage of sleep, if heavily inspired by the previous evening's viewing. Actually, I think we mostly slept on Friday, but I got up early to entertain the little one before Tumble Tots. I think we reviewed the Play-Doh (pink for Mummy, teal for Daddy and purple for Arya) and... maybe watched something.

Eventually I did persuade her to get dressed.

Tumble Tots was pretty good. She was a little avant garde in her approach to some of the exercises, but that seemed to be a general thing this session (the coach looked like she was feeling she'd picked the wrong week to quit drinking as child after child reinterpreted 'stand in that hoop and throw a beanbag into the other one.') After, we went to Cambridge for a shower, only Arya decided at the eleventh hour that she didn't want a shower and instead ran up and down the corridor of my office in the altogether and tried to steal tea towels from the kitchen. We had lunch in Waitrose in Trumpington, before shopping and heading home to collapse in a sad pile of limbs. Our big achievement of the afternoon was probably introducing Arya to The Nightmare Before Christmas.

We failed to make pumpkin pie, bake anything or look in the loft, but Hanna did carve the pumpkin. Of course, having left it to Halloween we'd been lucky to get the diddy pumpkin we did find. It was literally - in the correct and non-Webster usage of the word - the last one in the shop. We watched a bit of Toy Story before bed, hence the waking up.

On Sunday we pretty much slobbed around all day and did laundry. Arya and I went shopping briefly.

"That's Daddy Andrew's yoghurt!"

In the afternoon, Arya and I made cupcakes, which is always exciting. The highlight was discovering that she can now open the latch on the sugar jar with far more accuracy than she can spoon sugar into the scale pan. All in all, the results were better than I could have hoped for as we struggled to reach a consensus about how much flour to include and whether not continuing to pour it first into a second bowl because she'd knocked the scales and I couldn't tell how much I'd already added was some sort of dire betrayal.

We ate the cupcakes with ice cream instead of icing, which should tell you something about how well we were doing.

We also watched a lot of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, which is surprisingly watchable. I have the song 'Hearts Strong as Horses' stuck in my brain now.

Hanna and Arya left on Sunday evening, which is always a recipe for missing them especially badly. This is made worse by the fact that I'm off at a game next weekend, so I won't see them for a couple of weeks.