These overtime weeks are getting annoying. They really cut into my fund of good cheer and my discretionary time. A guy can hardly blog! And it's unnatural, doing all manner of work at my home computer.
Luckily, working after hours is a bit easier to take when I can interrupt whatever I'm doing to do a little parenting. We're in the middle of our second try at getting the girls to sleep in the same room, and we're having some success so far. Which means that we're also having some failure. About half the time, Vivi is either awake or awakened when I smuggle Julia into her own bed, and consequently starts talking to Julia, or yelling for me, or generally displaying her disgust with the situation. Inevitably, Julia can't get to sleep, so I lead her over to the guest room, where she dutifully falls asleep.
A few hours later, after the Little is well and truly out, I move the Big back to her own bed. The 120 minutes of slumber has reduced Julia to a ragdoll, so I pick her up, folding her long, almost-four-year-old body in my arms, and walk the dozen steps between the rooms. She blinks sleepily at me (or at the light in the room down the hall), smacks her lips in that way sleepers do, and nestles deep into her bed as soon as I lay her down. It's very sweet. I realize, doing this short-haul route, that I really miss the girls at night. It's nice to see them even for a few seconds.