So it seems I am odder than I thought.
Since I was young I have had quite vivid dreams, nightmares, which I would struggle to shake when I woke up and I’d go stumbling around in a half-dream half-awake state.
I take my sleep pretty seriously and since having children I have suffered quite a bit from the disturbed sleep. Baby #1 has never slept well and since the arrival of #2 she has slept even worse. #2 sleeps like a baby, thankfully.
So I am often up in the night with #1. Sometimes she goes right back to sleep but other times she properly wakes up and demands stories, songs, toilet visits, cuddles, toys, her baby etc.
Anyway, the point is when she wakes it’s a race; get to her quickly and she will probably go straight back to sleep – wait too long and she will take an age of nonsense. I’ve developed a kind of trigger now and I find myself getting through to her before I have actually woken up which causes some interesting effects:
- I went through to a hysterical 2 year old and understood right away that she was concerned about her ‘accounts’. I was sympathetic of course and told her not to worry about it and that I would help her sort it out in the morning. She didn’t seem particularly comforted by this offer but after a while she settled down and it was only as I slithered back into my own bed that I thought; ‘maybe it wasn’t about accounts’.
- It was the night before the prestigious Cycling World Championship Road Race – probably the most important one day race in the cycling calendar. A big deal, basically. As I emerged from the warmth of my bed and shivered through to her room I thought ‘This better not affect Mark Cavendish’s* race preparation’. Now, I’m not sure if I thought that I was Mark Cavendish or if I thought he was staying over at mine the night before the big race. But either way, it’s a bit odd.
*Mark Cavendish won the race so it didn’t put him off too much anyway. - Recently I have been a bit obsessed with chickens. Odd I know. Basically I am thinking of breading some broilers and going through the kill-it, cook-it, eat-it process. So when my little girl woke up and I lay down next to her on her bed obviously I was thinking; ‘is she a egg-layer or a broiler?’ I needed to know because if she was an egg-layer I needed to find the eggs didn’t I? I didn’t want to sit on them. In the end I decided she was neither; a girl, I thought, was the best bet. Odd.
// Jan 5th, 2011