20 Reasons Jeremy Couldn't Sleep

Tonight I missed housegroup, one of my only sources of adult conversation, because Jeremy wouldn't go to sleep.  Here are the reasons why, in his own words:

Reasons 1-10: Losta bankit, Mummy!  ('Lost' wasn't entirely accurate, though, as he was flinging it over the side of the cot).

Reason 11: Bag gone. (Yes, he had somehow managed to remove his sleeping bag and was standing up with it around his ankles.)

Reason 12: Wockin chair peeease.  (So we rocked for a bit)

Reason 13: Help!  (He had tried to remove the bag again, but got stuck with one foot through an arm hole having not succeeded in undoing the poppers)

Reason 14: Abi!  Want a Abi! (Abi has gone to sleep, why don't you go there too and find her?)

Reason 15: Losta bankit.

Reason 16: Wockin chair 'gain.

Reason 17: Brief tickle fight. (The only alternative to throwing him out of the window.)

Reason 18: Singa song Mummy.

Reason 19: Not at song.  Nother song.

Reason 20:  No 'leep.

Finally got downstairs to make myself my first cup of tea of the day.  Kettle boiled just as housegroup finished.

Cheesed off.

Missiles

Jeremy is currently very fond of throwing things.  In fact, I'm a little bit worried that I might have given birth to a ball player of some kind.  Of course that would be far too stereotypical for my liking - not to mention the fact that I wouldn't know what to do with him - but the child just loves anything spherical.  He points at lampshades, no smoking signs and the Firefox icon on the computer screen and chirrups, "Baw!  Baw!  Baw!" until we are squirming from all the cute.

A less desirable side effect of all this is his dearly held belief that everything bounces.  His plate, beaker and spoon end up on the floor at the end of every meal, leading to an inordinate amount of cleaning to be done at the end of every day - it's almost as if he was weaning all over again.  And tonight, the habit could easily have landed us in A&E.

Abi had done what I would term an emergency nappy.  The kind where scooping her up and dealing with it takes priority over wondering what her brother is up to.  I was just washing her hands in the basin of the downstairs toilet when Jeremy appeared at the doorway clutching a glass jar.  In the time it took for me to gasp and reprimand myself for not clearing away the painting we'd been doing, he lobbed it at the floor with an unearthly chortle and it shattered into zillions of tiny glistening shards.

Abi and I were stranded on an island consisting of the little toddler step, and the glassy sea around us was nothing like the one in Revelation.  On the other shore, and about to take a step towards us, was Jeremy.  That's six bare feet and an awful lot of broken glass.

Without moving my feet, I leaned forward, scooped up Jeremy, tucked him under one arm and Abi under the other, and did a sort of striding leap, aiming for the carpet beyond the doorway.  I missed.  I landed on a needle of glass that went straight into the ball of my foot, at which I took off again and dropped the children in a heap in the middle of the hallway carpet.

When I was explaining all this to TheRev later on, he said thoughtfully, "I would have just scooted the step along, and used it as a stepping-stone to get to into the hall".  Yes, of course you would, because you still have a brain.  My children have taken my brain hostage, and they won't give it back.  I'm not sure what the ransom price is, but I suspect it's something in the region of twenty more years hobbling about picking up shards of glass after bedtime.

The Current State of Play

It's been a while since I blogged here.  What with writing a book, keeping another blog, writing a guest blog and running about after two children, it can sometimes be a struggle to get back here!  However, here's a brief update on the current state of play:

Jeremy is walking, and he is at that stage of walking when he behaves like a wind-up toy whose legs move in a walking motion no matter what position he is in.  Pick him up, and his feet paddle in the air until they come back into contact with the ground.  Lie him down for a nappy change, and you get kicked in the face.  He throws himself into new challenges - literally - last week he had two black eyes from accidents involving a high chair and a toy box respectively.  Today he climbed down the stairs backwards (I was creeping down two stairs below with my arms out, terrified, but he made an elegant and swift descent without any need for catching).

Jeremy is also working on his communication by perfecting the classic point-and-squeak beloved of babies.  Except that Jeremy has made this ancient art his own by adding a stage.  It's now the point, squeak and leap.  He points, he squeaks and if you don't fetch whatever it is in under three seconds he leaps out of your arms in an attempt to get it himself by flying.  He can say a few 'words': 'Brrrrrm' for a car, 'duck' 'dada' and 'Aaaah-kuh!' which means Stowmarket (don't ask!)

Abi has suddenly become a preschooler.  She is tall and has a pair of shiny black shoes.  Her idiosyncrasies of language are just as delightful and nearly as incomprehensible as ever, but they are far more frequent and much more detailed.  When I do her hair: "Can I look in the mirror, so I can see how my pretty?"  When I ask her to do something: "No, I don't like to, I'm too busy."  When she sees something broken, shifted or altered in any way: "Oh! What's that happened?"  When she wants to show me something: "What my got?"  Her favourite thing at the moment is to give me presents.  She will wrap up anything in anything, hand it over saying "Look!  A present to you!" and then do a little dance while I open it.  The dance is an Abi trademark, and also happens whenever she is particularly happy, or knows she is about to get 'clocklick'.

Abi's memory for the spoken word or songs is phenomenal.  When she pipes up in the back of the car, you never know whether you're going to get an entire episode of Mr Tumble or all seventeen verses of The Wheels On The Bus (the daddies on the bus say 'Hello, I'm Daddy', apparently.)  Together we enjoy fitting new words into old structures to make endless verses of all her songs.  Her current favourite is The Animal Boogie.  Last week she composed her own song about a train and I had it stuck in my head for ages.

The best thing about the current state of play is that they finally play with each other.  Yes, it might be for only two minutes at a time, but real interaction is happening!  They are able to make each other giggle, and enjoy each others' company!  I live for those moments.  I hope this phase lasts for a while.