Dear Dave

  Happy New Year

Dear Dave,

Well, I guess that's the holidays over. I don't feel particularly rested, however. It's my own fault really - I shouldn't have stayed up late playing games and watching movies. In particular, Sarah and I really shouldn't have got sucked in by Love Actually on digital the other night. I don't think it even started until midnight and, what with all the adverts, it didn't finish until some ridiculous time in the morning.

And it's not like we hadn't seen it before.

Twice.

Still, we were staying at my parents' house, meaning we knew there'd be help with the kids at breakfast time, so we just vegged out and watched it. It was kind of nostalgic watching a programme as it was broadcast rather than getting the TiVo to watch it for us, totally failing to watch it ourselves and then deleting it a month later to make room on the hard-drive. The ad breaks even gave us time to fetch more beer and munchies. The daft thing is that my parents have the film on DVD. The box was visible on the shelf behind the TV. We could have been sensible and watched the second half the next evening. Failing that, with only the tiniest amount of effort, we could have put the disc in, avoided the adverts and got to bed half an hour earlier. For some reason, though, that wouldn't have been as much fun. It was nice to not have to be sensible.

It probably does say something about the whole parenthood experience, however, when living life on the edge is staying up past your bedtime to watch the end of a romantic comedy.

I used to go to bed around eleven and get up at eight. After years of late-night nappy changes, broken sleep and whining children, I'm now at the stage of going to bed after one despite having to get up at half-past seven. I'm no longer forced to stay up because of the kids but I'm used to it and it means I get some peace and quiet to relax after the chores are done.

As I've said before, getting enough time to myself and enough sleep, given the limited supply of free time I have available, is a delicate balancing act - too little of either and craziness beckons. I've teetered towards lunacy in both directions over the years and, right now, I'm probably trying to squeeze too many hours out of the day. I dozed off in the middle of reading Marie a Bob the Builder story the other afternoon.

My New Year's resolution should be to get more sleep. It doesn't need to be much more - being actually in bed by one should be enough. I don't usually make New Year's resolutions, though. I tend to work on the theory that if something needs doing, then it should just be done. If I haven't got round to it already, then starting in the dead of winter and the middle of holiday chaos doesn't seem like a good move. To do so is simply asking for failure and guilt. Still, I suppose there are a few things that I need to have worked on by the summer:

I should probably get some more exercise, now that I'm not pushing a buggy around much. I should also be more pro-active in organising stuff for Marie to do rather than waiting for her to suggest one of our usual activities - there are things, like baking, which I used to do regularly with the boys that I hardly ever do with my girl. Partly it's down to having to fit clubs and school runs into the day but it's also partly because I'm running out of energy. Hopefully, once she's at nursery in the morning, I'll feel more invigorated for cardboard forts and pasta jewellery in the afternoon.

Maybe I'll be up for listening to Lewis more of the time, too. I suppose I should listen to him all the time but that's aiming too high. He's been talking incessantly for about four years now and, honestly, donkeys run away at the sight of him in a desperate panic to retain their hind legs. In the swing park recently, a mum asked him how old he was. He answered and then kept the conversation going by telling her about Super Mario Sunshine. She looked relieved after about twenty minutes when he started talking about 'the last level'. What she didn't realise was that he meant the last level in World One.

He was still talking an hour later.

I'll try listening more but it's not high on my list of priorities. Phasing him out on a regular basis is something of a self-preservation technique. Top of the list, however, is to not be baited by Fraser. Somehow, he's very good at pushing all my buttons. Even the simplest conversation can turn into an argument.

"What time is it?" he asks.

"Seven o'clock," I say.

"I thought it was six o'clock," he replies.

In an ideal world, I would like some confirmation that he's taken in the actual time. To me, all that's important is that the facts are straight. My instinct is to say, "Well, it's not six o'clock. It's seven o'clock," and to expect him to agree.

There is no chance of this happening. He will merely explain why he thought it was six o'clock. This, of course, will make me feel compelled to point out the flaws in his reasoning and, let's face it, there will be flaws, for the simple reason that IT IS, IN FACT, SEVEN O'CLOCK.

This will not deter him. He will continue to explain why he thought it was six o'clock.

To him, the discussion is no longer about the actual time. He doesn't want me to agree that it is six o'clock - he just wants me to agree that he thought it was six o'clock and that thinking it was six o'clock was a reasonable thing for him to have thought. Essentially, by this point, we're arguing about different things. I need to take a step back so that, when he says, "I thought it was six o'clock," I can affirm him and move on.

My response should run along the lines of, "OK." Deep breath. "Why's that?" Listen. "Fair enough." Change subject.

I must learn not to say, "But it's really seven o'clock." He knows that. He just doesn't know that I need to know that he knows that. I shouldn't expect him to. He'll have to learn to put up with the sound of me gritting my teeth for a while, though. I'm going to find it hard to establish my zen.

So: exercise, interact with Marie, listen to Lewis and not argue in circles with Fraser. It's not so much a list of resolutions, more the 'Requires Attention' section of my performance appraisal. I'll do my best, but I'm not making any promises.

Maybe I should get started by going to bed. A little more sleep would probably help...

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

PS It's always possible that I may be pressured into making a resolution anyway in the next few days. If everyone else at parent and toddler lists theirs and then looks at me expectantly, I'll probably crumble. I'm already labelled as the anti-Santa; I don't need to be the guy who objects to New Year as well. Previous years, I've gone prepared with responses like, 'I'm going to eat more yogurt,' or, 'I'm aiming to suffer fools a little bit more gladly.' Nothing too strenuous but enough to make it sound like I'm joining in.

This year, if pressed, I'm resolving to make a self-fulfilling resolution.

Oh, hang on... Done.

Labels: sleep

  11:00 PM - Permanent Link - 0 comments - Post comment - Links to this post

  All I can remember is Jeremy Clarkson

Dear Dave,

Sorry to hear the sleeping has gone out of the window again. I've rarely had to deal with children playing tag-team parent waking so I don't entirely know what to suggest. Daisy's so young that there probably isn't much you can do - if she wants to wake up in the middle of the night, she will. (Controlled crying is always worth a try, though). At least Sam's at an age where you can threaten him with reprisals if he doesn't ignore her and go back to sleep - I find that turning off Marie's night-light for a few minutes is usually enough to get her to settle down.

You've got my sympathy. I've had plenty of experience of sleepless children. I refer you back to the tricks I've learnt. Probably the most important is to have a DVD you want to watch in the player ready to go. That way, if worst comes to worst, you won't be stuck watching phone-in quizzes as you while away the small hours of the morning with a grumbly baby. It's worth making sure the DVD has subtitles so you can still follow what's going on above the whining and crying. Other options include web-surfing using a Wii, Teletext and MTV. Personally, I have many memories of semi-consciously watching repeats of Top Gear I'd recorded on TiVo. It was amusing and it didn't matter if I missed dialogue here and there thanks to a screaming baby or if I 'rested my eyes' for entire sections.

Actually, there are parts of Marie's early life where I remember more about three nutters destroying caravans in entertaining ways than I do about much else. Sleep deprivation addles your brain. I got to a point where I was functioning on autopilot most of the time. The boys were up from half seven in the morning until eight at night. Marie woke at eight in the morning and was up until eleven at night with only an hours nap in the middle. I stayed up until half past midnight to get some time to myself to help stave off insanity. Frequently, Marie then woke up at three for an hour or two of crying.

In retrospect, this was pretty horrendous but, at the time, I was cocooned in a hazy mist of zombie-dom. With one child at school, one at morning nursery and another needing regular feeds, bottles and nappies, my timetable was always laid out before me. It wasn't so much that we had a routine, it was more that there was only one way to fit everything that needed to be done around everything which had to be done. I could muddle though the day without much thought. I don't actually recall wandering around with my arms stretched out, muttering 'Brains... Brains....' but, then again, I don't actually recall very much at all.

I do have a very strong recollection of Richard Hammond trying to make an amphibious vehicle out of a camper van, however.

Strangely, that's more useful than you might imagine. By concentrating on that memory, I can make other recollections surface. I can bring back thoughts, feelings and experiences that would otherwise be forgotten. It doesn't just work for Top Gear, either - by thinking about a book I've read, a film I've watched or a computer game I've played, I can remember something of what life was like at the time and possibly even specific events from that period. Little else jogs my memory so well, apart from thinking back over times when I've been ill or exhausted. I can remember those occasions very clearly too.

This means that many of my most vivid memories are of multimedia delirium, where illness and entertainment have coincided.

For instance, I know I had gastric flu a couple of weeks after Final Fantasy VII came out. I clearly remember where I'd got to, how I felt and what our old lounge looked like from that combination of gaming and vomit. Going from that, I can also work out the time of year, how my job was going and any number of other little details. When I felt too ill to even play a game (which is very ill, by the way), I sent Sarah to the video store to find a film with explosions. She came back with Die Hard with a Vengeance - proof, if ever I needed it, that I married the right woman.

Similarly, the fifties version of Day of the Triffids is linked inescapably in my mind with the first week of my chickenpox eruption, the second week is brought back by thoughts of playing Fable on Xbox. Mention of the forthcoming Fable 2 just makes me feel queasy.

The Hellboy movie recalls a cough so bad that I had to chain-suck Lockets and sleep sitting upright in an armchair.

My one experience of sleeping rough is all the clearer in my mind because I bought West of Eden by Harry Harrison the next day. The memory of trying to keep warm while lying in a binbag on a hillside in Derbyshire is made sharper by the memory of reading about horny, humanoid dinosaurs while very, very tired.

Other people's recollections seem to be triggered by different things. Sarah's memory is jogged by smells. My mum's is organised around food. It's like she uses what people ate as some kind of mental hook. She'll tell me news she's read in the paper about an old school friend of mine that I don't even remember and, when I look blank, she'll say something along the lines of, 'You went round to his house once. You had chicken.' I'm not sure whether I find it more weird that she remembers what I had to eat or that she thinks I'll remember it too.

Quite what this tells us about any of the people involved, I've no idea, but I've been trying to work out how my kids best remember things.

Thinking about it, the descriptions they came up with to differentiate between the parent and toddler groups they went to when they were small are telling. Fraser referred to his as, "The pink one, the one downstairs and the one near John Lewis." It was an aspect of the location which stuck in his head. Marie talks about, "The one with Craig, the leaving one and the snack one." It's the most significant event of each one that makes hers memorable, whether it's the attention of a particular helper, the quality of the snack or me slinking off for three-quarters of an hour while someone else takes over.

Lewis' preferences are harder to remember (the irony!) because most of the time he just copied Fraser. Probably, given free rein, he described them with phrases like, "The one with jigsaws." He differentiates places by what's there because he has a good memory for what things contain. We keep trying to make a little more space for him in his bed but he always knows when something has been removed.


There's a bed under there somewhere...

Maybe there's some way I can use this knowledge to get them all to remember to wipe their feet when entering the house. If only I could work it out...

Ach, the scary thing is, even if I did work out a theory, I'd probably forget it unless I caught a cold and then watched a movie.

Ho well, maybe you can mull it over while you're watching Pirates of the Caribbean at three in the morning. Let me know if you come up with anything.

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

PS Marie has a frighteningly good memory, actually. She was watching Laura's Star on DVD the other day. She hadn't seen it for a while but she was quoting the script with ease. The film got to one bit and Marie described what was happening and followed it up by saying what was going to happen next. "And then Laura goes up to the roof and she meets a robot cat and she says, 'Hello, little cat, how are you?'"

Sarah was freaked. "How do you remember that?"

Marie just smiled. "It's a good thing to say to a robot cat if you find one on the roof."

Sarah found that kind of hard to argue with. They went back to watching the film.

Labels: children, sickness, sleep

  10:00 AM - Permanent Link - 2 comments - Post comment - Links to this post

  Imagination

Dear Dave,

Thanks for the sympathy over the lack of sleep. Things have been OK the last couple of days but Marie's kicking up much more of a fuss at bedtime than she used to. I can only assume having me at her beck and call all night gave her a taste for power. Speaking of which, she was wanting me to vote for her in the Scottish elections. She's decided she's in the Pink Party. This is kind of like the Green Party but, rather than pushing for a greener planet, the Pink Party's goal is much, well... pinker. I suspect if they ever came to power then the whole world would resemble the girls' aisle of Toys'R'Us (except maybe with a bit more glitter, if that's possible...)

She's only two-and-a-half and she's inventing political parties! You were asking for more examples of how every child is different and I have to say that if there is one thing which varies wildly between my children it's their level of imagination.

Oddly, this is best exemplified by their attitude towards LEGO.

Everyone knows the entire point of having children is in order to be able to buy cool toys while looking like an ace dad rather than a hopeless loser geek. (Or is that just me?) Anyway, I've been biding my time, waiting to purchase LEGO Mindstorms, for what seems like an age now but it's beginning to look like none of my kids could actually care less about LEGO. All for differing reasons, of course, but all to do with the bounds of their imaginations:

To Fraser, a pile of bricks is just a pile of bricks. He's also a bit lazy so if he wanted a castle, he'd want it ready assembled and to come with lots of interesting levers and stuff. If he got it, he'd play with it for five minutes, check how it all worked and then go off and play a computer game. He doesn't have the imagination to make up stories about some bricks. It's not anything - it's just LEGO. Prospective careers: Engineer, Traffic Warden, Middle Manager.

To Lewis, a pile of bricks is a pile of bricks but he can be persuaded to stick a few together and make believe they're a castle or a pyramid. This is all well and good but he has slightly too much imagination to see the point of LEGO. He can make a car from three small bricks and a wheel. The tiniest semblance of reality will do - he doesn't need a big tub full of weird and wacky specialist parts. (Drat). Prospective careers: Architect, Journalist, Estate Agent.

To Marie, a pile of bricks could be anything from a selection of apples to a washing machine. The problem is, if you can stretch reality that far, who needs bricks? (Apart from to weigh down your pockets to stop you floating away). Prospective careers: Advertising Creative, Public Relations Officer, Space Cadet.

We knew Lewis had a strong imagination from an early age. When he was two he was constantly making us all imaginary cups of tea (no plastic cups or anything). One day Fraser got fed up with the silly make-believe nonsense, however, and decided to play Lewis at his own game. Fraser held out his imaginary cup at arms length and slowly tipped the imaginary contents over the floor. Lewis burst into tears. He was distraught at all the work he'd have to do cleaning up the mess...

That's a slightly scary amount of imagination. Marie has probably surpassed him, though. Sarah asked Marie's opinion on a couple of pairs of trousers she was trying on in a shop the other day. On seeing the first pair, Marie shook her head. "They snakes eating your legs. You not wear them." On viewing the second, she said, "No, they have a chicken in them." On the way home in the buggy, she suddenly commented, "The wind turn me into a cat... I not go miaow."

When Marie's a little older, I can just see her and Fraser having big arguments while staring at the sky:

Marie: It's a dragon.
Fraser: It's a cloud.
Marie: It looks like a dragon.
Fraser: But it's a cloud.
Marie: What about that one? It's a deep fat fryer!
Fraser: It's a cloud.
Marie: That one's a spaceship. With aliens. And lobsters.
Fraser: That's a cloud, too.
Marie: Look! A pirate made of sausages!
Fraser: IT'S... A... CLOUD!
Marie: He's playing hop-scotch.
Fraser (finally giving in): Oh all right, and that one's a sheep.
Marie: No, that's a cloud.

I may have to intervene at that point in order to avoid bloodshed...

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

PS I took this photo of Marie following the Eternity of Sleepless Doom. I imagine this is how Britney Spears must look the morning after a really wild night out with Paris and Lindsay:

Labels: children, sleep

  9:00 AM - Permanent Link - 0 comments - Post comment - Links to this post

  I spoke too soon

Dear Dave,

As I sit here, with my eyes propped open with lollipop sticks, I realise that my previous correspondence about sleep was tempting fate. Either that, or Marie's learnt to read and she felt like having a laugh.

I've been awake for thirty-six hours now.

If this turns into gibberish then you'll know why.

Marie has a cough and we gave her some medicine before bed last night but she sicked it up with some phlegm pretty quickly so it probably didn't do much good. She tossed and turned for a while, then came down to sit on the sofa and watch some Little Mermaid before going back to bed. (She thinks of me as King Triton now, by the way, which is a step up from the BFG at least). All was quiet for an hour or so and then she woke up and demanded a cuddle. She got a cuddle. Five minutes later she screamed, "I want cuddle from mummy too!" She got that. Sarah and I went to bed.

Twenty minutes later. "I got cough. You make me better." I hadn't got to sleep so I went through and gave her another cuddle before she woke Lewis in the bed next to her. Then I went back to bed myself.

Fifteen minutes later. "I need my water." I'd almost got to sleep. I went back through and reminded her where her bedside table was (i.e. beside her bed), waited for her to have a drink, tucked her back in and went back to bed.

Ten minutes later. "You fix it. Daddy! You fix it, daddy!" This is code for 'I'm lost in my duvet.' I went through and rescued her.

Another fifteen minutes. "Blow my nose!"

Two minutes. "You blow my nose again!"

Just enough time for me to get back into bed. "I need water."

Seventeen minutes. "I need cuddle!"

Three minutes. "You fix it!"

And so it went on... Bear in mind as well that we had elderly relatives staying over last night. They were in our bed and Sarah and I were on the sofa-bed. On a different floor from Marie. Just getting to her became an effort as the night wore on. I think I might have nearly dozed off at about twenty past four. Nearly.

"I need water!"

Twelve minutes. "I need water!"

Three minutes. "I need water!"

Her shouting had become louder and screechier by this time, to the point where she sounded like a Dalek. As her loyal pig slave, I scurried through, grunting. This had no effect on the volume or pitch of her voice. "I need water," she shrieked in my face. I moved her cup the fourteen and a half inches from her bedside table to her hand. She took the tiniest of sips and then screamed, "You put it back now!"

I put it back but told her she could get it herself from then on. She might have been tired and sick but I suspected she was also taking advantage. I shouted myself. She wimpered and agreed.

Five minutes later. "I need toilet..."

Give her credit - short of being sick, that was the one plea I couldn't ignore. It also took far longer to deal with than any of her previous problems. She's clever, that one.

Ten minutes. "Blow my nose." I was at least glad that she wasn't asking for the toilet again.

Two minutes. "I need toilet again!"

Argh...

Things never improved. At half past six, I just gave up and had a shower. Of course, even this had a small intermission in which I had to drip into her room and pick a cuddly toy up off the floor. I don't know whether it fell or she threw it there. Either way, I wasn't impressed. I shivered my way back to the bathroom and finished 'getting up'.

Marie promptly stayed asleep for an entire hour and a half.

I sprinkled some Sugar Puffs on top of a bowl full of coffee granules and had my breakfast while quietly reading GameCentral on Teletext. Then the boys got up and it was time for the day to begin...

Somehow Lewis had slept through everything. On the one hand, this was fortunate. On the other, we may need to get a louder smoke alarm.

I'm quite tired now. I got through the day surprisingly well. I wasn't much of a conversationalist but that's true most of the time. I was a bit crotchety but, again, that's not hugely unusual. I wasn't called upon to make any life changing decisions, which was probably lucky. Sarah came home early to help out, which was lovely. We survived.

Now it's time for some sleep. I think Marie's settled tonight. I'm just holding off for a few minutes to make sure before going to bed.

(I hope fate didn't hear that).

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

PS Waited until morning before sending this. We all slept through but I appear to have woken with the mental and physical capabilities of a slug. The DVD player may be doing a large portion of the parenting today...

Labels: sleep

  10:20 AM - Permanent Link - 0 comments - Post comment - Links to this post

  Every child is different

Dear Dave,

Already? Are you sure? I mean, I guess you'd know but... Yeah, thinking about, I suppose you are halfway to another child but where's the time gone? Goodness. You're probably thinking the same thing. No wonder you're sounding a little panicked. Still, you'll probably find coping with two easier than you're expecting. You've had plenty of practice with everything like nappies and baths and it won't take long to get slick again.

On the other hand, not to worry you or anything...

Every child is different.

You'll know some mistakes to avoid but, chances are, some of the things that went smoothly first time round will be more of a bumpy ride this time.

Fraser had terrible trouble sleeping and it got to the point where I had to share the spare bed with him and cuddle him most of the night. Since it was a single bed and neither of us is small, I tended to wake up both tired and hunched and then lurch around the house like Quasimodo, gibbering about coffee. After a year of that, it was a case of either leaving him to scream himself to sleep or constructing my own bell tower and just going with the whole tormented mutant look. Fortunately, a couple of nights of hard hearts and stubborn wills sorted things and he's gone to bed fine ever since.

After our experiences with Fraser, we were keen to do better with Lewis. He got hankies to clutch for comfort (replaceable and easily portable!), he wasn't allowed to sleep so much during the day and he was left to get himself to sleep from an earlier age. We also used Ashton and Parsons tooth powder. It all worked great. He slept twelve hours a night from a year. He didn't sleep at all during the day by that point but I didn't care - we had evenings and I'd almost entirely lost the desire to go bell-ringing. We smugly believed that we knew what we were doing.

Then Marie arrived.

She never slept well to start with but teething was disastrous. She wouldn't go to bed until ten or eleven at night and then often woke up and cried for a couple of hours at three in the morning and then got up at eight (if not before). I dreamed of the days when I felt as agile as a hunchback. My limbs seized up and I took on the twisted appearance of a gargoyle. I sprinkled coffee directly onto my Sugar Puffs.

Nothing worked. She had muslin cloths to cuddle but she merely grew to need them as well as me to get to sleep. She spat out Calpol. I managed to get the tooth powder in her once but that was only by taking it out of the sachet and putting it on a spoon. That took her by surprise. The next time, she saw it coming and blew it all in my face. I couldn't cut down on her daytime sleeping because, well, it wasn't like she ever really slept then either.

There was no alternative but to go for the screaming again. It was desperate, but we were pretty sure it would work...

I had to leave Fraser to yell in the cot for nearly five hours before he gave up and went to sleep. (Going in to check on him made things worse, by the way). Marie only lasted a minute and half before becoming so upset that she was copiously sick all over herself, her sheets and the carpet. This happened every time we tried. It was more work than cuddling her to sleep. We gave up.

My skin turned hard and grey. If I stood still outside for too long then pigeons started to nest in my hair. Passing stonemasons attempted to kidnap me and stick me to a church.

It was only when she was over two and able to be reasoned with that we had any success. One night, when she'd been up for hours, I put her in her bed, told her to go to sleep and then stayed in the room with her. Every time she gagged, I told her to calm down. After three hours, it was time to get up but at least she hadn't vomited. After a few nights of doing this at bedtime and whenever she woke up during the night, she got the idea.

Life's been a lot easier since. I can now walk without creaking. Water no longer pours out my mouth when it rains.

We'll know what to do next time...

(Yeah, right...)

Keep your wits about you. Try different things. Get some sleep now.

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

Labels: children, sleep

  9:13 AM - Permanent Link - 0 comments - Post comment - Links to this post