the honey heavy dew of sleep. what did Shakespeare know about insomniac toddlers?

I've been given a wonderful blogging opportunity, so I thought I'd make the most of it. Florence has given me the gift of time, aka I haven't been able to go back to sleep since she started calling for me at 4, not even when she finally realised at 5.45 that I wasn't joking about walking her to the station and putting her on the next train. Thankfully the commuters of haslemere were spared the sight of an insane mummy in pyjamas dragging snivelling child onto platform 3. Partly as most of them get the 5.32.  So after 2 hours of putting her back to bed, staying with her, going back to my bed for anything up to 30 seconds, not staying with her, not going back to bed, waking daddy up, giving up and starting the day at 5, then deciding to go back to bed, but not doing, then having several long talks about the virtues of a well-rested household, whereby a seemingly satisfactory agreement was reached, followed by a complete disregard for any promises hitherto made involving bed and the return to it, until mummy ran out of ideas and a sobbing child finally took herself back to her room, where she has remained sine 6am. I believe in parenting terms, this is deemed a 'success' and we are to repeat the process each night until she is sleeping all night without calling mummy by the time she is legally entitled to vote.

It does not help the issue that 5am in daylight terms cannot really be called 'night' despite £50 of blackout blinds from c&h in Guildford, bought in desperation last week.

The only obvious solution, I think is to get jobs as redcoats, so we can live at butlins permanently, as that seems to be the only place in the world where she stays in bed and SLEEPS.

To make things worse, last week's sleepfest has reminded my body what it feels like to be a normal person, and it doesn't want to give that up, so I am finding myself less sympathetic about giving up any shred of lunchtime or evening activity, as too knackered to do anything. I have even signed up for a run in October, which last week seemed easily achievable.

Ho hum. And potty training is a whole other story. Seems Florence is gifted in many ways, excelling at nursery in art and French, and progressing well in ballet, but all anyone wants is for her to stay in bed and not soil herself. Which is all most of us want, frankly.

I don't want to end up on morning television as the mother of the teenager in nappies...

Oh look, its nearly time to wake up. Toodle pip.