The Sleep Routine

So Beckett turns really irate when she is sleepy. She doesn't like being confined to the boring bedroom and needs a special routine to fall asleep. She has a clear cut time bound escalation mechanism to ensure that her bidding is done. At first she politely gives you the look, then babbles. If that doesn't elicit an appropriate reciprocation, she shouts; and then when you have finally got her goat, she will unleash the big banshee guns.

Essentially she wants to be picked up and rocked in a swaying motion till she falls asleep. You can see the illustration below.

Some clarifications: 

1. At no point does she leave my or her grandfather's hands during this routine. Although it looks like it, there is no levitation involved in this tehcnique.

2. In step 3, it is my beard that has grown considerably.

So there is an upside and a downside to this routine. 

Upside: Great biceps. 

Downside: Bad compulsive addiction, extremely time consuming and need to master another landing technique to avoid a painful Promethean perplexing perpetuating process (because once she falls asleep, she has to be put in her bed eventually; and that is the most difficult part).     

Pappa is trying to unlearn and learn faster than she can, but has a tough time keeping up. Mummy has become a pro by now.

Beckett Speak - 2

In 2007, I wrote a poem about a girl. I don't have it with me anymore and I don't remember anything about that poem today except that it had a 'garrulous lass' in it.

The long vacant office of the 'garrulous lass' has a new occupant now. And boy does she love talking!

From goo goos and ga gas to peacock like screeches to Arabic, Japanese, and Bhojpuri sounding noises, this kid has a vast vocabulary in her repertoire. Add to it the fact that Grandpa has extremely mature conversations with her everyday and Dad reads Jack and the Bean stalk and was contemplating reading Tuesdays with Morrie (It was my read this weekend and I was really tempted to multi task) to her. So while she still can't talk, or to be more precise, while we can't currently understand what she is trying to talk about, she still tries really hard to make us understand.

There is a melodic lilt, a cogent intent, and a definite message in those cryptic aural delights that we are treated to; more and more often with every passing day.  

As a boy, I feel sorry for the boys who will have the fortune / misfortune of coming in contact with my daughter. She is going to mesmerize and wound as many hapless souls with her words as with her gaze. The kind of trouble this heady concoction of beauty and intelligence invites is not funny. I worry about this too from time to time and think that this is a prophetic inevitability that I brought upon myself when I wrote that poem. 

P.S: 3 and a half months in, being a parent is definitely much tougher than getting and raising a Dog or a pet. But through the discomfort you can clearly see the magic happening to your own self. As I mentioned in one of the earlier posts, the finished product is not the child; it is the parent.