April, 2007

Thursday night was a bad night for AT. Daisy woke up barking at nothing around 2:30 am, and AT says that I deigned to speak twice in my sleep: once to say "Just the thought of being in the French Quarter makes me want to take a shower; seriously" and again to simply declare "more coochie". I don't remember any dreams.

Last night was a bad night for Yrs Trly, during which I started an upgrade of the BlueNC software that has since spiraled into disaster, and which I expect to be working on for some hours to come. :)

No, wait:

:(

sg has been sleeping just fine.

Somehow the timing worked out today so that sg got four bottles instead of her usual five, which is how I ended up feeding her at 2:30am while she stared up at my face. I remembered reading somewhere about the age when children first identify themselves as distinct from their environments. It made me think about self and other, and what it must be like to live without these concepts. For one thing, it makes staring a lot less rude.

The thing is that I think I start to fall for it once in a while. I get a small dizzy thrill from the way that the outer bounds of my identity become permeable and diffuse when we stare at each other. I know that it's an illusion, this unity. But it's real for her, so why shouldn't I indulge for a few minutes?

It all helps me to understand the thing I saw in my parents' faces in my childhood when I was harsh to them — surely they had, like I did tonight, entertained the notion that they were each somehow one with their children.

I learned from sg tonight a method for curing hiccups, at least temporarily. I was rocking her, waiting for the hiccups to pass before I put her back in her crib, and holding for her a doll so that she could practice exploring and grabbing with her hands. She did an exceptionally good job, but the mental exertion at such a late hour obviously left her spent, because when she went to rub her eyes, she seemed to forget how her elbow worked. Her fist shot up and down a few times like she was playing some fevered round of rock paper scissors before she punched herself right between the eyes.

No more hiccups. So I wrapped her up and put her to bed.

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