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At 11pm I changed my son’s nappy (actually took it off, realised it wasn’t wet and replaced it, but it’s the same thing) and fed him a six ounce bottle of milk, without him waking up once. I don’t think there has been a greater achievement in the whole year. A successful dream feed is the dream of every parent and as I tried to fall asleep myself I hoped that I might have six or even seven hours of uninterrupted slumber. But ironically I couldn’t get to sleep myself and Ernie woke up just four and a half hours later, but that didn’t take anything away from the triumph.
I am doing my best to be as good as dad as I can be (3 out of 5), especially in these two months that I am backing off from working in favour of doing family stuff. But it’s all such a blur of sleeplessness and tetchiness that it’s hard to take stock and enjoy the process. A smile from a baby that has woken you up in the middle of the night because he’s shit himself is surprisingly disarming though.
And in spite of all being a bit lurgified we made the most of the day, managing to get out with the in-laws for a pub lunch and then taking the kids to soft play and as usual terrifying myself by flying down a small slide designed for children from 2 and up. But maybe my extra weight makes the experience more scary than for a toddler. This is quite a small soft play and was usually packed - though I have only been here on a normal week day afternoon before - with exhausted looking parents, trusting that their kids would look after themselves. Incredibly they generally did, even the smallest ones understanding that they must diligently wait until the previous people had got out of the ball pit at the end. And there were no injuries, except when a dad let his much too small kids have a go and they slid down looking terrified and one of them bumped her head a bit and cried. What a baby. I had only screamed all the way down. But I hadn’t cried.
I had wanted to cry.
Very impressed with the first episode of Black Mirror. Not only a phenomenal budget, but a brilliant and fresh take on a Star Trek pastiche, that goes so much further. Great to see a shedload of money and an interesting script come together for once - having watched the Groundhog Day rip-off, “Naked†the other day (still looks like Citizen Kane compared to "Little Man"), it’s good to see great writers given the chance to create something original and thought-provoking. And psychologically chilling. Looking forward to the other five in this series and fantastic to see Charlie Brooker doing so deservedly well.
