Not sleeping


Butterball Destroyer is getting fed by a bottle at the moment, and just like her father she’s a fast eater; she’ll drain 80ml in a few minutes, shudder slightly and then be wide awake. (On the breast she was more easily pacified, for want of a better word – slumber came much more easily.) As milk from a bottle is something we have a limited amount of, she’s not being fed on demand for the next week, and she’s not convinced this is a great idea.

And this is the fun of having two children, I guess.

Worried that her bawling might wake La Serpiente (I don’t remember newborns being as loud as Foghorn Foreman seems to be) I try to be useful by taking on the job of getting my daughter to sleep. What worked (for at least five minutes) was a long walk with the stroller. Not that she’d sleep in the stroller, of course, I’d have to carry her in my arm and push the stroller, whilst telling her the story of The Three Bears. (That was partially a bid to bore her to sleep – long digressions delivered in a monotone about the implausibility of bears sleeping in beds, the conjugal implications of Mummy and Daddy Bear sleeping apart, and so on.) She shut her eyes for at least five minutes, then woke up crying as soon as we got home. Did I mention that she’s very similar to me?

So I took my little doppelganger out for another walk, half an hour around the estate, including five minutes of sleep, so now my right bicep feels like I’ve been stabbed in it and my head hurts. But I did receive a compliment in the lift about how cute Destroyer is, I got a comradely nod from another father walking his child late at night, and I saw a woman with a very cool hat walk through the estate, so it’s not all bad.

All that, and I deleted about fifty work emails this evening. At this rate I’ll have caught up with the backlog when the kids have finished university…


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