Yelling

Our baby is apparently going through sleep regression, which is when a baby sleeps less than it used to. This is perfectly normal, just as it’s perfectly normal for a child’s parents to be more harried and worn out than usual, as their previously cooperative baby decides to wake up and yell at them more often.

She yells until we give her a bath. Then, when she decides she’s clean enough, she yells some more, until we take her out of the bath. This tends to anger her, so she yells for a bit, until she’s fed, at which point she stops yelling for a moment or two. This is only to build up her reserves so she can carry on yelling, of course.

Strangely, it seems that if I then bounce her, while counting from one to one hundred in Spanish and then back down again, she realises that it’s better to sleep, so she stops yelling and passes out in my arms, after which I can put her to bed and go do the things I had to get on with this evening.

Except, of course, my short term memory obliterated by all that yelling, I haven’t the first clue what I was meant to be doing.

So I do the washing up. That’s a safe option. A day will no doubt come when the baby is asleep and all the crockery is clean, and then I’ll truly be at a loss. Until then, there’s a clear purpose to my life.

Tomorrow I’m flying to Bangkok for a company offsite. Bangkok isn’t far, and I’m only staying until the end of the week, so my packing is minimal: the smallest number of shirts and underwear possible to maintain cleanliness, without having to check any baggage. On a short trip, the less time spent at the baggage carousel, the better.

I do worry though that I’ll arrive in Bangkok and realize I’ve left something essential back in Singapore. Like my higher cognitive functions, perhaps.

Today I had a Magnum Espresso. This is like a normal Magnum, but with dark chocolate and a flavour like coffee crossed with slightly overripe fruit. It’s given me bad breath and a foul temper, and so I can’t recommend it. Aside from that, and going to get a photograph of our child printed on real paper, nothing eventful has occurred today that I can talk about.

As Wittgenstein said, "that of which we cannot speak, we must remain silent." Although I daresay he was talking about the complexities of language, rather than corporate non-disclosure agreements.

And so to bed.