Saturday 7 March 2015

What is this nap time of which you speak?

I haven't written on here recently as I have been spending most of my life wandering around Wembley in a dead-eyed haze, pushing a pram containing a wide-eyed and alert Piglet, who sits staring at me blankly as I plead with him to take a nap.

He does actually need a nap.  He has all the signs.  All the signs that every baby book and website says are there to tell you that the baby has gone past his window of normal drowsiness, and has passed into the realm of the wired clubber at 6am getting second wind after fifteen vodka Red Bulls.  The yawning, the eye-rubbing, the screeching; even the frantic crying when put into the pram and forced to wait for an inordinately long period of time for Mummy to rush around the flat taking such obscene liberties as grabbing the keys and putting shoes on before we can actually leave.

And every time I tell myself, through the persistent and ear-splitting screams, he will be asleep as soon as we leave this flat and start moving.  Please God, don't let the neighbours think I'm some sort of heinous child abuser.

The thing is, back in Ye Olden Days (a few weeks ago), Piglet did fall asleep as soon as we started moving, but now he is far too excited at the prospect of having a little wander round Baby Gap, or  watching Mummy drink a latte in Cafe Nero, that he simply Will.  Not.  Sleep.

Today we walked the entire perimeter of Wembley Stadium (which is a surprisingly long walk, let me tell you), being buffeted by gales (it's randomly very windy up there.  Sort of like being in the middle of the sea), with Piglet wide awake and wired, eyeing me from his car seat with the slightly insane look of the sleep-deprived.  We walked so far that we encountered a whole new Sainsbury's which I didn't know existed (forgive me my excitement.  I live a simple life).  We saw people dressed as actual real monks and nuns.  One was in a full-on authentic Mother Teresa outfit.  I thought it was her until I remembered that she was dead.  I thought I might be hallucinating through lack of sleep but it turns out that there was a Catholic event at Wembley Arena.  Actual monks and nuns in the genuine uniforms people!  Who knew?  It was a bit like that moment in my first term of university when two people in the E block kitchen started talking about their boarding schools and I started guffawing with laughter as those things died out in the 1950s and only lived on in the Mallory Towers books, right?

And through all this, Piglet continued to sit in his pram, wide awake, taking it all in.  We went into Cafe Nero and he behaved impeccably, sitting bolt upright in his car seat like one of those black and white pictures of bonnet-clad 1930s babies in their humungous prams, fixing their gaze on the camera in a steely stare while children in rags play hopscotch around them.  We then went home and all hell broke loose, with persistent shouting interspersed with a few brief periods of quiet where Piglet was pulling his Bumbo seat apart while I tried to get him to eat his dinner, followed by an hour and a half of constant breastfeeding.

He is now asleep, but for how long?

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