Sleeeeeeep

Five hours and ten minutes of consecutive sleep. That's F's new record. We're both still in shock, the kind of shock that so much sleep can bring you after you've missed it for a while. Let's skimp over the fact that a little over five hours is still not all the sleep you could wish for. It's a goddamn miracle as far as I'm concerned.

It took F by surprise as much as anyone. She woke up with a tremendous scream, the kind that the Nazgul make when they unexpectedly find a spider in their shower. Or something they're actually afraid of, you know, something truly vile, episode eight of the rolling Hobbit adaptation or something. I understand New Zealand is now an entirely halfling-based economy. They measure their GNP in how many chapters of the Silmarillion are made a year.

Every day makes F's personality a little clearer. I was thinking the other day about how people anthropomorphise animals. It's easy to do, they sort of think a bit like us in some ways, so you assume they've got basically human emotions and thought processes when they really really don't. I know we do the same with our baby, look at the odd squinty smiles and think 'awww, look, she's happy!' I wonder how much of it is really gas-based.

I don't think she thinks about things in remotely the same way that we do, not yet. But she changes so fast. In the last week, she's started actively playing with toys rather than staring sort of just past them whilst looking bemused. By playing, I mean awkwardly smacking or stroking them, to be accurate. I'm just desperate to make a connection with her that I can understand, I guess, so I read anything into anything and call it a conversation. You just pooped on daddy? That means you love me!

Mind you, my dad made this point about language generally the other day. I was chelping about not really understanding Swedish, how I often seem to follow but miss the finer points. Or how I find it hard to trust that I have understood something, like I don't quite believe that I could have yet.

"I'm just pretending to understand," I said.

"Well, we all do," he said. "That's how language works."

F is presumably looking up at us as we pull ridiculous faces and pick her up unexpectedly and shove pacifiers into her mouth and take her clothes on and off for no reason she can see and take her out in sub-zero temperatures at odd hours, and she'll be thinking 'ah, right,that scream just meant don't stop feeding me, but okay, you're close. I guess it all means you love me, let's go with that.'

She does smile more, for more apparent reasons now. And she's more specific about her screaming and grunting, or maybe we're learning her language a little. Or at least learning to kid ourselves that we do in a way that works, just like everybody does all the time. And that's fine.