29 July 2009

My weird children

Their sleeping patterns keep changing, but once or twice a week, the stars align and they both sleep all through the night, in their own beds. Naomi could never fall asleep without breastfeeding, as I recall, but the flip side of that was whatever problem she had could be solved by feeding. Mei is completely different: it's only a utility for eating. She's not interested if she's not hungry. This makes it easier for me to put to her to sleep, but also makes life harder because there is nothing that charms her and she inconsolably cries and cries and cries when she is unhappy. Naomi is also now completely toilet trained, but not when she's sleeping: something I discovered when I put her down for a nap yesterday. Pretty soon we won't be buying diapers for her at all.

I should be working on my dissertation, but the first full draft is nearly done and I kind of want it to go back to my supervisors so I can make the changes they want and just be done with it. I would like to take some time off in August, but I have some Birmingham papers to mark starting next week and I'm still trying to finish a paper for ADBI that has been like a month in the works.

Still no visa for Mei, which means my passport is still with the Home Office and it's looking increasingly like I won't be travel out to Spain for my friend's wedding in August.

I was able to take my longest run of the year this morning. A little over ten miles. In fact, come to think of it, I should very soon be able to run a half-marathon. Now I just have to work on my times. I ran on the canal path today which stretches all the way through MK. No streets cross it, which is really nice because you can stop thinking and just run. All the other places, you have to be so careful not to get hit by cars and you're always slowing down to cross streets. On the canal, you can just run and run and run without thinking.