Beyond the Wall

I'm not sure there is a 'beyond the wall', actually.

I'd certainly run into it last week. The previous post was basically filler I prepared a while ago, just in case I ran out of brain at a later date. Bonus points for planning, me.

There were a couple of moments this week where I thought 'okay! I'm okay now. I'm past the pain barrier and still running.' Then I'd discover that rather than hurdling the exhaustion wall, I'd just backed up a bit in a confused manner and was now running into it again with the battered determination of a fly trying to ram through a window pane.

F is now sleeping better. Her favoured position is with her head carefully screwed into my armpit, something she'll be delighted to be reminded of as a teenager. Her greatest likes this week are staring onto lights, especially moving ones, and improving her favoured sleeping position by doing an impression of Jeff Goldblum eating doughnuts in The Fly into it.

Her greatest dislikes are getting out of the bath and not being held by a grown-up for more than five minutes.

She's also been persuaded that a pacifier is an acceptable substitute for our fingers again, after a rather fraught two hours of persistance from mummy. Disturbingly, she likes it best when I'm holding her, and then only if she takes it herself, worries it like a terrier for five minutes, then clamps it against my useless man-boob with all the power in her neck before sucking away with her eyes shut. You can almost hear the mantra  being mentally recited, 'This Is Really Mummy, This Is Really Mummy.'

I worry that the power of a child's imagination could eventually cause this to come true.

She now occasionally enjoys sitting up in her chair and gazing at Mr Peacock, a fabulous creature she was sent as a present by the excellent Forsyth family. Mr Peacock has a phosphor green plush face and wings in every possible configuration of texture, pattern and noise generation. I was unable to stop looking at him for at least ten minutes when he was unwrapped, he's hypnotic.

He hangs from our dining room table chandelier, squeaking on demand, with all three of us gazing up at him with bleary eyes. It's like something out of Lost In Space, a family held captive by the powers of a fluorescent moth creature. All we'd need is someone playing a theremin in the background to complete the picture.

I'm typing this one-handed, by the way, F is asleep on my shoulder. When I saw Tomorrow Never Dies, I felt very sure Johnathan Pryce was faking it in the scene where he types out some new headlines one-handed, villainously taunting Bond all the while. Maybe he practised a lot, and to be fair, he's holding a laptop, not a baby. But I reckon he's just typing any old garbage and putting a dramatic flourish on it. So am I, mind you, just a lot slower.

My parents arrive tomorrow for a week of holiday, which will be great. I told F this, giving it a big sell for meeting her UK Grandparents for the first time; she smiled, made cooing noises and then pooped loudly. That's how excited she is.