Day 5 - Sun

Fell asleep again putting babies to bed tonight. It's quite good - means I don't have to bother about getting myself dinner; however I lose the only baby-free time in my day. I hadn't cleaned my teeth though, so had that annoying half-wakefulness where I knew I had to get up and do that...so now I'm up at 1.30am with freshly sparkling teeth.

I'm so relieved we can breathe easier. I don't have language big enough. It's odd receiving drips of information by text message; huge pieces of news in 160 characters.

I have so much support here I feel a bit embarrassed. Everyone wants to do something, and I am the only candidate available for helping! It's lovely, but you & Alice & your mum are the ones doing the really hard stuff, so I almost feel fraudulent.

Hannah and Georgia came over to play with the babies this morning. Two teenage girls for a couple of hours - perfect! They did fingerpainting and playdough and hide-and-seek and dancing in the loungeroom to very loud teenage music (I felt quite middle aged!)  Pearl and Louis were exhausted by midday. Granny in the afternoon - she's so reliably practical in a crisis. Food-washing-cleaning and 'go and lie down for a few minutes'.

And then Julie's party in the evening - the regular crowd plus a few new people. I made Nigella's chocolate cake out of this month's De1icious while Hannah and Georgia were here.  It's odd to be amongst people who are just going on with their normal lives, although I felt a bit more like part of the human race tonight, knowing Alice is doing better. We stayed til 7pm! I think that's the latest I've been out with Pearl and Louis. They just ran wild with all the other children. It was so great to watch. I felt a bit redundant. I'm accustomed to having them constantly dripping off me when we are out and about and it seems that they have suddenly joined a new age group - the age when children find that their natural allies are other kids, not their parents at all! I thought they might just crash when we got home (I knew it was a long shot) but no, they still needed about two hours to wind down. Maybe it's our fault for having a long bedtime routine? - ie baths at 5.30ish then an hour of quiet play before bed. Still, I like our calm evenings and wouldn't change them.

When we got home I was sleepier than they were - struggling to keep my eyes open while I waited for them to calm down enough to reasonably expect them to 'drift off' to sleep. Now I must go back to bed before I awaken myself too fully.

Love to you and Alice and your mum.