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.

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.

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

Zzzzz.

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.

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
.

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.

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.