Sleep is for tortoises

Trouble brewing.

Arya has started singing the alphabet song, quite a lot. She's pretty sound on the opening, then wobbles a bit before a strong closing; something like: "A B C D East Street Bee. Age I J K Emmlemmnupee Coo R S T Oo V dubbada S Wa ah Zed" (and yes, zed not zee. Result!)

This weekend, Hanna and Arya brought Arya over on Friday night. She arrived sleeping, and thus woke in the middle of the night craving milk (and Dr Bear, for comfort rather than sustenance.) I dutifully provided and after some time (I have no idea what actual time this all happened) got us both settled and asleep again, only to be woken at 5:30 by a grinning baby, excited to begin her day. By some miracle, I managed to keep her from bursting in on Andrew and Sam in the living room until six, and scored Hanna a few more hours of sleep.

Sam is Andrew's new girlfriend. Saturday morning was the first time Arya had met her, which involved climbing up between her and Andrew and calling her Mummy. Apparently a side effect of a polyamorous household is a flexible approach to the terms mummy and daddy (she also seemed to be calling some other dad in the park daddy on Sunday) and someone in the house when she wakes up apparently qualifies for definite. We explained that Sam was not mummy, but Sam, and thankfully she got the idea pretty quickly.

Ely, ponies, and on the left, Sam.

We did baby gym, then went to Ely for the cathedral open day, where Arya had a whale of a time running around a huge, open space. when we came to leave, we left Andrew and Sam to make their own way back to Martlesham, and Arya was sad to see Sam go, calling through any available door 'Sam! Where are you!'

By this point, everyone was shattered. Hanna had a nap and Arya fell asleep on my nap with a bottle in her mouth. Consequently, she went down for proper sleep pretty late, but she still woke up at 4:30, immediately calling for me.

Swimming was a bit of a farrago - a lot of stuff I'd not done much, with a tired baby and a tired Daddy - but breakfast was as good as ever and then we went shopping. She got new shoes, but we didn't buy a Minion because she couldn't decide if she wanted one. I suspect that Build-a-Bear freaks her out because she can't figure what to leave behind. If I hear she's been good, I may pop in and get her one over the week.

The playground backfired this week. She had a great time, but it was all swings, so it wore out Mummy and Daddy much more than her.

Once she eventually got to sleep, we watched some TV and fell gratefully into bed... until 4:45 this morning.

It was a great weekend, but spondic reserves are bottoming out now. Please send spoons.

Unclean! Unclean!

Blotchy baby.

So, this weekend (which began on Wednesday when I came over to Ipswich to help with childcare,) Arya has had chicken pox. I know it's best to get it over with early in life, but she's been so miserable poor mite. She's been itchy and feverish and periodically subjected to assault with cold moisturising creams of one sort or another. It's a tough life.

I traveled over on Wednesday morning to relieve Andrew, who is running short of leave. I found her blotchy and itchy, but generally in good form and sitting in boxes full of stuff (she was most put out when Daddy Andrew took the stuff - papers, Magic cards, picture frames - out of her box and lined it with a blanket.) We had a little lunch and went for a walk in the woods and she napped a little, but despite not sleeping much during the day she found it hard to sleep that night.

On Thursday we mostly mooched around the house, save for the going to sleep walk, which she assayed in nowt but a nappy, in spite of sun and wind. Andrew and Hannah spent most of the evening getting her to bed, and she didn't finally settle until gone midnight.

"It's for you."

On Friday we watched Planes and waved Hanna off for the weekend. We ran around in the park before her nap walk, and by the evening she was doing much better. There were a few new spots, but mostly they were starting to dry out and I think very early on Friday morning was the peak time. In the evening she asked where Mummy was and was very comprehending when I explained that Mummy would be back later in the weekend. She then tried to call Mummy on a compact shaped like an owl, as though it were a phone, which is odd as she only tries to call people in the room on the actual phone.

"He'll never get it out of this lot."

She also successfully used the potty and referred to her picture on my phone as 'me' instead of 'Arya'. I think this was her very first pronoun.

On Friday night I put her down to sleep in about half an hour (go me) and then on Saturday we had another chilled day with some Planes 2 and, naturally, some Sarah & Duck. We went for another walk in the woods and she tried to persuade me to ditch the pushchair altogether, even making an attempt to push it off the path into the undergrowth.

On Saturday night we discovered that her room was too light for her to feel like going to sleep, so Andrew put up a blackout blind on Sunday. Sunday was also the day when she found her snow suit, insisted on dressing in it, and then took me out for a walk of an afternoon.

Hanna got back too late to see Arya, but she did find her way into the bedroom while we were asleep, opening the door before Andrew called her back.

This is just the tip of the iceberg; there were so many amazing moments that enlivened what was overall a pretty rubbish time given that she was ill. I am shattered now, but I don't regret the time and effort, not just because I was able to care for my daughter but because it gave us so many wonderful moments of bonding, from the cuddles to her insisting I fold myself into her cot-bed next to her, to her allowing me to go back and rest instead of joining her and Daddy Andrew for her walk on Sunday (I must have looked truly knackered.)

Super Dad

Fire-fighter Arya!

This Easter weekend, I have had sole care of Arya while her Mummy and Daddy Andrew were at Empire, so this post is likely to be a biggie.

Mummy and Daddy Andrew headed out early on Friday morning, leaving Arya upset, but not inconsolable (this is apparently a sign of secure attachment, which means she loves having parents around, but as long as one of us is there trusts the others to come back.) We headed out for a day in Ely, including a visit to the playground, a simple picnic lunch and a visit to the Ely Museum.

"I never said it was always wrong
to enter fairyland..."

Arya had a great time on the climbing frame at the playground, and clearly enjoyed the automatic doors of the museum. She was less keen on the museum in general, having no creepy Victorian taxidermy collection, the highlight of any childhood museum visit, but did get to push a wooden eel around on wheels and gave it back without having to be pushed too hard. She also had fun with the eel hive in the park, and quite charmed some passing old ladies:

"Oh, aren't you sweet!"
"Your daddy took a picture of you."
"Your mummy's home cooking you dinner."

I felt like pointing out that Mummy was camping in a field with her husband and I was just her fancy man. Hanna thinks I should have told them my wife was dead.

By the time we got home, we'd been out and about for about six hours, so I may have overplanned that one. Still, we had risotto for dinner and she went to sleep beautifully, only waking briefly during the night to demand milk, spill it on the pillow and drop off again.

On Saturday we went to the library. Not much interest in the books this week, but the book train was a hit. A little later, my parents came over and we had a curry together. They were very impressed by the way she ate her chicken korma (and a little lamb dansak.) We went for a walk after and she howled at being put in the pushchair, but eventually relented and went to sleep. That was her only nap of the weekend.

Eatin' milk with a spoon. Classy.

On Sunday we went into Cambridge to see Big Hero Six. It turned out to be a little too scary for her, so we came out after an hour, but we did get to have breakfast together, which was lovely. On the way back I got into her bad books by stopping her getting off the train at Ely. I'm not sure why she wanted to get off at Ely; perhaps she remembered the playground was there.

"I'm going to go up, and come back
down, and then we can go in."

Later on, we had a few disputes. She's into serious boundary testing, so getting her to hold my hand when we'e out and about is harder than it was. At one point she basically tried to walk into the road in front of a car. She was rattled by the experience, I could tell, because she didn't protest when I caught her and held her back. She did try to make a point by climbing up and down the stairs before consenting to come into the flat.

And then she tried to assert ownership of my glasses. She's very into things being 'my' at the moment, but I put my foot down with the glasses. "You can do what you like with them, but they are mine."

Cue massive tantrum and me being all stern with her, then leaving her to work it through as if I sat near her she just pushed me away. Eventually she called out to me and I think started trying to spit-shine the floor (classy girl.) I got down low as I go so as not to be all tall and intimidating and said I was sorry for snapping, but some things aren't hers. She kept taking my hand and throwing it away, but I realised after a while that actually she was pushing my hand up, because she wanted me to stand. She then gave me her hand to help her up and asked for a cuddle, which I gave.

I asked if she wanted to pick up with going to bed and she said yes. Drama done.

On Monday we made cupcakes. Arya was very keen to help, but a little unguided.

There's something about this look
that suggests to me she wants to be
in a Transformers movie.

"I hep!"
"Yes, but we don't need the eggs yet."
"I hep."
"Yes, but not the flour yet."

When we added the eggs, she broke the last one, cracking it on the edge of the bowl before crushing it in her grip. She was a little upset, but I gave her a wipe to clean her hands and I think I got all of the shell out of the cake batter. They were very tasty, despite my concerns that the butter had been too cold and the mix not properly mixed.

We went out for a nap walk after lunch, but although she was super good and calm, she basically woke all kinds of up when we got stuck in the queue because nothing at the big Co-op works right. She was then hyper all afternoon and into the evening and entered a phase of precariously balancing on furniture. I got her to channel some of that into playing on her rocking dragon, Lola, but by early evening I wasn't sure I could leave her long enough to cook.

Dragon rider!

I tried to put a pan on to boil pasta. There was a thump and I ran in to find the baby monitor on the floor next to a decapitated Gromit. That was about when Hanna called to say they were running late. I tried to give up and order pizza, but was so incensed that I could get two large pizzas, sides and a drink for what they were asking for two small gluten free bases that I rebelled and went back to the pasta cheese plan. It was a fraught and slow process, and in the end I was coaxing Arya into her sleepsuit when Hanna and Andrew rolled up at 8:30 (two and a half hours after originally planned, but half an hour earlier than expected.)

Actually, I tell a lie. She was washing the floor having dribbled toothpaste on it. She'd offered to 'help' and I gave her the cloth absent mindedly as her milk was done heating. She then refused to be stopped from wiping for a full five minutes until she was sure everything was clean.

There followed some serious Mummy cuddling, then I took her to bed. I sang her 'The Land of Hush' and quite unexpectedly, she sand me about nine repeats of what I recognised by snippets of complete lyric to be 'Incy-Winsey Spider', the nursery rhyme equivalent of that film with Ewan McGregor and Naomi Watts about white people enduring a natural disaster that devastated South-East Asia. Then she went to sleep.

Monday was pretty tough, especially by comparison to the rest of the weekend, so I think we've found a cap on how long she is happy to spend without Mummy. I'm heartened that it's only a little less time that she spends without me most weeks; also that she was sad to see me go this morning, even after a solid weekend of time with me. I'm also proud that I managed to vary activities and even when resorting to telly mixed up the Sarah & Duck with some other movies and Despicable Me shorts. I also kept the washing up up to date, got a load of laundry done, and watched episodes of Person of Interest, Bones and Agents of SHIELD. Having it all, gentles; having it all.

Do you want to Build a Snow Man (exhausted remix)

Do you wanna build a snow man?
Or learn the lyrics to this song?
I really only know the title line,
It makes it hard if you are trying to sing along!
I think I've got the tune down,
But the words won't stick,
No matter what I do!
Do you wanna build a snow man?
What is the next line I don't know, man.
How 'bout you?