Rowan Tree and Red Thread

BB was wakeful and annoying again last night. Sammywol took the brunt of it and didn't get back to bed until after 5.00 am.

We need to break this stupid habit he's developed before he's sold to the next passing Jehovah's Witness. All suggestions gratefully accepted.

Up again this morning with BB at 6.30. He woke me from a long, reoccurring dream of lost belongings, a stolen wallet and suitcase (and my trousers, though without any comedy to relieve the stupid anger the dream provoked). I'm pretty sure I fell into the same dream several times, as I woke up repeatedly.

Stupid f*cking dream.

I'm going to be grumpy all day.

Well this has been a long night. BB has been up pretty much since 1.45am and has his parents worn down to paper-thin wraiths. I feel like I've been bearing the One Ring for too long.

I have no idea what is up with the little blighter. I hope it passes soon.

We drove down from Dublin last night. Leaving Dublin was a bit of a production. DD decided that she didn't want to travel at night and threw a strop at wash time. She was eventually persuaded that at no point would she be left in the car on her own in the dark and we got everyone loaded into the car.

The trip down was mostly uneventful apart from one crazy bastard who overtook us on the inside, struck our wing mirror, switched lanes into the oncoming lane and drove through the junction we'd slowed to stop at against a red light on the wrong side of the road. No damage done but damn he was close to a head-on collision.

Once on the road proper both kids fell fast asleep. This lovely state of affairs lasted all the way to the last roundabout coming into Cork when DD woke up. At the house both kids were awake unfortunately for the unpacking and I had another half an hour reading books to DD and holding her hand to get her back to sleep.

Which made BB's wakefulness at 4.30 this morning bloody unwelcome I'll tell you. He was awake and chatty for about an hour. After a birthday celebration the day before (admittedly quite a sedate affair) and driving from Dublin I did not need that.

*yawn*

Good holiday though, both in west Cork and in Dublin. Thanks to all the pals who showed up on Friday for my birthday party and to those who couldn't make it but sent along their birthday wishes.

Oscar was awake at stupid o'clock this morning again. If this is his idea of a protest against Daylight Savings why can't he march on the Dáil like everyone else?

Everyone else in the family is asleep. I wonder if I should take it as a sign.

Zzzzz.

I spent the morning with Oscar. sammywol was teaching as usual for a Thursday in term time, and Rowan was at school, so I was doing my 'mind the baby' thing with Oscar. He's been a bloody terror at night recently, with interrupted sleep and difficult nights for both his parents but today, despite a 40 minute wakeful period round 6am, he was golden.

We had a great time rolling the ball, making tea, listening to (and dancing to) my friend Barbara's Top Plays of 2007 CD (Thanks Barbara!) and generally spending a lot of time smiling and sharing hugs.

He must have realised he needed to up the balance in his 'I'm adorable don't sell me to gypsies' account. I think it worked.

2008 seems to have arrived safely as I slept. With a 9 month old boy of erratic sleep patterns I was never going to stay up 'til midnight.

Sam, however, was up late. Oscar decided the time between midnight and 3am was perfect play time and Sam's early birthday present left me sleeping as she dealt with the boy.

He seems to be none the worse for his lack of sleep and odd hours. He's currently watching one of his grandparents' dogs expectly skin a tennis ball. I can't tell if he's delighted or horrified. He's certainly mesmerised.

So for 2008 my first and most fervent wish is for health for all the family. 2007 had quite a few ups and downs in this respect and we could all do with a more stable, healthy routine.

Oscar, this means sleeping. At night. Understand?

Happy New Year everyone.

Oscar hasn't been sleeping well these last few nights. He's got a rotten cold and is badly stuffed up and is finding lying down to sleep difficult. So Sam and I are panda-eyed with lack of sleep from multiple interruptions during the night with a restless, snot-bedeviled baby.

At one point last night I headed downstairs to offer Sam a rest and switch over of minders. She was watching an old episode of ST:TNG as Oscar cruised about, wakeful and relatively cheerful. Sam said she was okay and I went back to bed.

In bed, however, I didn't get back to sleep straightaway. As I lay there an odd noise on the stairs caught my attention. I hear the banging sound of stair gate at the bottom of the stairs. Oscar likes to bang this gate, and we usually leave it pushed shut past the catch so it has enough range of movement to bang between catch and step.

Sleepy-headed me didn't join the dots immediately. A few moments later I heard footsteps on the stairs and foggily I thought it was Sam coming to bed. The television was still on however and the steps were very slow - step, pause, step, pause, step.

Click!

I dashed out of bed and found Oscar halfway up the stairs, methodically climbing up by means of the bannisters.

It's all go at our house sometimes.

On my way into work now, after an early start courtesy of the end of Summer Time and Oscar. Awake and active at about 5.00 this morning, he was. He's usually an early riser and coupled with the clocks going back this weekend he's now a ridiculously early riser. Stupid Summer Time.

It's made worse by the expectation that next Sunday my wife is going into hospital for a gall bladder operation. She'll likely be away for at least two nights and Oscar is entirely used to a bedtime routine centred round his mother. I lack a couple of important assets, you see.

Well, he's in for a rude awakening. Unfortunately I will be too, no doubt.

I'm taking all of next week off to man the home front during Sam's hospital stay and subsequent recovery. Thank goodness my job has that sort of flexibility
.

Our kids gave us a difficult night. I was up to Oscar at 12.45 when he woke up and refused to sleep in his Moses basket, but was perfectly happy to sleep in my arms. Twice I attempted to put him down to sleep in the basket and twice his eyes flew open to accuse me of stealing away his lovely body temperature pillow. Eventually sammywol took him into the bed to feed him and he slept. I was awake again around 2.00, but was so bleary I can't recall now why. Rowan woke briefly at 5.20 to complain that her room was too dark, so I got up to her and turned up her light.

Then she woke up properly at 6.00, saying "It's 7 o'clock Dada, time to get up." We really need to work on her reading the clock. I did manage to convince her that it was, in fact, 6.00, and she dozed again until about 6.45, when she got me up for good.

Tea. I need more tea.

Today I'm starting the morning at 7.20, or wehatever it is, and for the
first time in recent memory Rowan is still asleep. I haven't been woken at
6.00 or 6.15 by a voice from the next room and I'm at a bit of a loss to do
anything except drink my tea and wonder if she's feeling quite herself.

Sometimes when Rowan is going to sleep, she asks to hold my hand and to count sheep together. I take her hand in mine, and I count.

( Cut for sleepyheads )

[Edited for typo to satisfy purpletigron.]

My lovely daughter and my darling wife are both ill at the moment, struggling to overthrow the advances made by some uninvited viral guests. This has meant that my daughter is sleeping poorly, and last night was like a flashback to pre-toddler days of broken sleep and long hours spent sitting by her cot. I was up for a couple of hours in the middle of the night holding her hand, fetching her drinks and administering infant paracetamol.

When she finally went to sleep, my wife was breathing heavily because of her blocked up nose and I knew I wouldn't be able to get back to sleep beside her. I went and slept in the spare room, after a few minutes wrestling with the duvet and its cover in semi-darkness.

This morning I am tired.

We also have a return of our problem with access to Livejournal. I can log in from work to either of the two accounts we use, but we have no http or ping access to www.livejournal.com from home. Rebooting the DSL router to get a new IP address doesn't seem to help this time either, so I'm increasingly confused and pissed off. The guy at our ISP says he can ping and http access LJ fine, so it's not the whole IP range or domain that's being blocked. Livejournal haven't responded to my support request and I have no idea why we should be suffering this. It's infuriating.