endless night

When Marta was born my Uncle Frank advised me that I would never sleep the same way again. He was wrong -- I have had plenty of sumptuous nights since.

In fact, I find it is hardest to sleep when I am on the road for work. I prefer to fall asleep to the sound of my wife and children breathing nearby.

But last night was an example of what you may expect once in awhile when you have children. At midnight, Anna was ready to cry, ready to crawl, ready to nurse, and ready to rock'n'roll -- but definitely not ready to sleep.

It seemed like nearly all night I tried to ignore the anguish Epp went through as she tried to deal with our driven youngster. And just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, our bed broke -- that is two of the supports in the middle collapsed.

At this point, I thought that I should fix the bed and if we put everything together I could be fast asleep by 4 am and get a few hours of decent sleep before the bright Estonian spring sun woke me up. But when I glanced at the clock, it already was 4 am.

Anna watched with great interest as I crawled beneath the bed, finally deciding to reinforce the support with larger, sturdier screws. So there I was at 4 am with a battery powered drill, putting our bed back together as Anna stood at the bottom, taking note of my every move.

Finally, the bed was safe for our use and Anna seemed semi-ready to go back to sleep. When I did get up at 8.30 to make the coffee, though, Anna was again ready to rock'n'roll. In fact she looked up at me and said in baby language, "Daddy, do you know what time it is? It's time to rock and roll!"

It was also time to fill up the diaper. So after I made coffee, I changed Anna, handed her back to Epp, and sucked down some life-sustaining Löfbergs Lila.