Sleeping

HARRY’S sleeping is a funny thing. When he first goes to bed at night, I swear you could put a brass band outside his room and he wouldn’t wake up.

But after about four in the morning, he’s awake at the slightest sound – including the creak of floorboards.
As you can imagine, this makes visiting the toilet in the night something of a challenge.
Sleeping in the day is another challenge altogether. Take last Sunday.

We decided to pop to Eagles Meadow in Wrexham to get the last of our Christmas shopping done and, much to our relief, Harry dropped off in his pushchair shortly after we arrived.

With Harry still fast asleep when we’d finished the shopping, we thought it best not to disturb him by putting him back in the car and decided to have some lunch instead.

The restaurant looked fairly quiet, so we wheeled Harry inside hoping to eat our lunch before he woke up.
Unfortunately, our table was right next to what has to be one of the noisiest coffee machines in the world. Whenever somebody ordered a hot drink, there was a bang, followed by a loud tapping and the sound of steam being released.

Every time this happened, Melissa or I would check Harry nervously, expecting him to wake up.
We had managed to eat our starter before it was all too much for him and he woke up, slightly dazed.

Of course, we then had to negotiate our main meals while keeping Harry entertained.
Fortunately – and perhaps surprisingly – we discovered that he quite liked the seafood sauce on my pasta; dipping pieces of bread in it kept him quiet just about long enough for us to finish our food.

It didn’t make for a particularly enjoyable meal, however, as Harry insisted on standing on the seat and shouting ‘ba-ba’ at baby on the table next to us.

Put it this way, I was left wondering whether it would have been easier to risk waking him by putting him in the car after all.