Nessun dorma – Puccini’s commentary on parenthood?

Fainjin came into our bed again last night.  Or this morning.  Or, actually,  I think it was both.  He banged his way through the house, nuzzled against me, climbed over me, wriggled and jiggled, and was eventually taken back to bed by his Dad.

Sometime later, he was back.  He was whiny and restless and hot and kept pulling the duvet off me.  I rolled away from him, and was prodded and kicked and knocked in the back as a reward.  Not deliberately, mind you – he’s just that wriggly.  But my back has been sore all day since.

About 6:30am, Pearl came in.  One day, we’ll have trouble getting them up on a Saturday, and these will be the “good old days”, I suppose.  She was miffed to find Fainjin in our bed.  Probably not as unhappy about it was I was, but she had been hoping to sneak in for a cuddle.  She climbed over him and I think she tried to climb over me.  She and Fainjin started to argue about something, and got grunts of dissatisfaction from exhausted and rather grumpy parents.

And then Pearl did something wonderful.  She looked at us, bleary-eyed and weary.  She looked at Fainjin, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.  And she said, “Fainjin, how about you come to my room with me and I will read you a story?”

She even let him play with her horse-and-pony Lego set, and we got half an hour to wake up slowly.

Tonight, she got to stay up to watch Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937 version) on TV, as a special thank-you.  And we’ve dug the baby-gate out of the basement.  We’ve never used it in this house – no stairs – but it’s now installed across Fainjin’s bedroom doorway.  Fingers crossed.