'Bedtime. No, it's BEDTIME.'

It's late. Putting the baby to bed turned into an epic task. Thinking back to before Christmas it seemed that at 7:30pm we would lay her gently in her cot and she would roll over and close her eyes, ahh. bliss, what a good baby.

It can't have been as easy as that, I know, but the holidays definitely have disrupted her sleeping pattern. Tonight, as I tidied the living room and washed the dinner plates, I listened to Shortie shouting and throwing her toys out of the cot. Peeking round the door I could see by the night-light Shortie standing in the cot bouncing up and down, grinning that cock-eyed grin that means she is grinding her teeth. Awake. Lynne sat by the cot looking exasperated.

An hour of that and then I took her and spooned her on the bed. The baby, not Lynne. This means pinning her down while she moans, until she gives up and goes to sleep. She shakes her head, screwing her eyes up and pulling her ear, anything to keep herself awake. I watch through from under my eyelis, my eyes half-shut so that I don't make eye contact. That would be an invitation to laugh, play and pull at my face. She is gone in five minutes. What a performance.

Yawn

Today the baby wouldn't eat her soup. She was too tired. I don't know how she could have been too tired because we both slept in, and something of the hierarchy of the household can be deduced from observing the sleeping positions of the inhabitants; baby, luxuriating across the middle of the bed; me, slipping down the crack between the wall and the mattress with a bare corner of pillow; Lynne, up and getting ready for work.

Of all the things in the baby's life, whether or not she goes to sleep is the only one over which she has any real control, so it is odd that it is the most problematic. She likes to sleep on her stomach but she has also recently discovered how to sit up from this position too. This means that when I put the sleepy baby in her cot, she immediately rolls over onto her belly, which is good, but then she pushes herself upright and cries because she can't sleep like that. It's really silly. 

She is asleep now. I got her to sleep by spooning her. We lay on the bed and I closed my eyes so she couldn't make eye contact, breathed in and out as loudly and slowly as I could, in the hope that this would be soothing, and pinned her down with one arm across her chest. She struggled for a bit, then started rubbing her eyes, then her breathing slowed, and she was gone. I then gently moved her into her cot and crept out of the room. It all took about twenty minutes. What a carry on.