Paul Davidson
Weeknotes 053: This is so humiliating!
Keen to get a start on the week, Piglet gave up on sleep by 5 am. Mid-morning and both our moods were fractious. Tantrums were allayed by turning the couch into a den-cum-car. Lǎolao called to say she’d made dumplings and we postponed Sunday roast to Monday and headed round for our fill. She’s recuperating nicely.
We’re now confident that Piglet’s bad sleeping is the final arrival of the final molars. We drug her before bed, 4 hours later give her more and again 4 hours after that. I avoided sleep myself in the middle of the dosing regime, favouring our bathroom instead. That portentous inability to finish my steak fulfilled. Unlike me.
There was no chance of making Monday morning meetings. I called in sick and went to bed. At midday I repeated for the afternoon. In the evening I left The Chef to care for our daughter while I suffered cold chicken soup straight from the tin. I’ll grant that sounds disgusting, but it’s my comfort place when I’m ill. The Sunday roast ingredients moved to the freezer.
The Chef was treated to a 1 am declaration that “If I cry, mammy comes.” followed by sinister chuckling. What do you do with a power move like that?
Feeling moderately better I took the monitor while The Chef recovered from that psychological attack. I wasn’t awake enough to make it through the rounds of patting an had an involuntary co-sleep of sorts on the floor. The Chef responded by ringing the grandparents to baby-sit at the weekend to give us time to decorate the dining room.
Piglet can curl her tongue now. Just another in the ledger-book where my genes have top-trumped.
We made the mistake of putting her in an 18-month-old dress. I had to dislocate her eyebrows to get it off.
When she’s being tickled, if she’s enjoying it she’ll ask “again” once she’s got her breath back. It’s reassuring because without it, tickling is low-key aggressive.
Her toys will occasionally cry. When we ask why it’s because they’re sad. When we probe as to why they’re sad, it’s because they’re sad. Tautological, but you can’t argue with the truth.
After last week’s sombre tunes, a more upbeat paring of Nation of Language and Gabriels. The Gabriels EP has the quality of making me think “this is the best song on here” before the next starts and I revise my opinion up.
I left my charger at work on Thursday, so needed an unplanned office trip on Friday. After nursery we avoided traffic while playing in the park. Piglet needed to go for a wild wee and, unpracticed, that included over me. I’ll point her at the tree next time. Once home and everyone tucked up, I spent a couple of hours readying for decorating by (quietly) moving furniture and doing repair plastering.
Ever-eager grandparents turned up early to take Piglet to the farm while we decorated. Her presence elsewhere is enough to defer procrastination: we’ve given up the shared time and let’s put it to use. We had two coats on by 7pm. With other bits and bobs crammed in while the first dried. It was without guilt that we played games and bathed that night.
10 October 2021