I almost didn’t get around to write this today. I did have free time this morning and during Tiger’s naptime but I squandered it on coding my Windows 8 app for sewcrates.com (if you’re one of the lucky few with such a device, you should run to the Windows Store and download the app with the original name: sewcrates.com).

Even now my fingers are itching to get back and finish a couple of features. Okay, I couldn’t resist, I made a note in my TODO file about one last fix before I resubmit the app for certification.

Enough about programming (although I should spend one of these thirty minute sessions detailing what I accomplished. Not sure if that counts as creativity, although, if I think about it, I doubt the following words will count very much as creativity either).

I’m sitting in the office, watching Tiger on my second computer screen through a night camera installed in her room. She’s crawling around her crib trying to put herself to sleep. She’s been trying for over an hour. It’s almost time to go upstairs and see if I can help things along. Dinosaur is next to me in a pink bouncy (stop judging as he’s too young to know the difference—and besides, pink used to be a boy’s color: red, the color of blood, was a man’s color, and pink, the younger version of red, his son’s. Now, the flowers and butterflies covering the bouncy I don't have a good excuse for). Dinosaur’s been sleeping for the last twenty minutes, which gave me enough time to make the last programming fix.

By the time I started to type these words, however, he began making his dinosaur sounds. Yes, my son is part dinosaur (and dragon, if you’re into the Chinese zodiac). A few gentle rocks for the bouncy every minute or so quiets the dinosaur and leaves me to type off a few more words.

My mother was worried that I had more bad dreams—or more likely that I was about to lose my job and mooch off her. No bad dreams to report (or remember). Last night was similar to the previous nights, where sleep was interrupted, but Doolies did most of the work (bless her kind, gentle soul), getting up with his many dinosaur cries, feeding him, rocking him to sleep, replacing diapers, etc. I took over in the morning with Tiger.

She is still listening to her music and moving around in her crib. I’m afraid for the day she realizes she can climb over its walls. She’s lasted a long time in the crib while most children her age, I’ve been told, have already vaulted from their crib in what I imagine is a painful leap to freedom. Once they are successful, parents move their children to less secure housing—it is strange that the better they can escape, the less boundaries you put in place.

I have Tiger’s toddler rail for her crib next to me in the closet. The toddler rail replaces the fortified front of the crib with a half wall, the other half open and easily accessible so the toddler can climb down without necessitating a pole vault. Luckily we have a careful and thoughtful child who is comfortable in her walled-off crib. Hopefully she’ll remain this comfortable for the next 10 years or so. I have no idea what we’re going to once she can freely roam around her room. While still not perfect, she is sleeping through the night, and I firmly believe a large part of her sleeping is thanks to being trapped in her crib. I’m hoping I’m wrong because while I love my child, I also enjoy quiet evenings with the Doolies.

I had plans to take Tiger out this morning but failed miserably again. Lately the mornings have been too difficult to think about showering and dressing before 11am. Not sure what’s going to happen when work starts again. It probably won’t be terrible since I’ll have external motivation, which is much stronger for my psyche than the internal variety.

I jotted down another feature note in my TODO list. The good news is that I’m almost done with all the planned features. The bad news is I have big plans for rewriting this website (again). I’m thinking of moving it to another host and recoding the plumbing (because you can only paint the outside of a house so many times before you need to invest in a different money—or in this case, time—pit).

Dinosaur is nicely sleeping now, and Tiger is popping up and down in her crib and looking around. The night camera gives her coyote eyes: eyes that glow preternaturally when facing the IR camera. I spoke too soon about Dinosaur, as he again gave off a small dinosaur cry. A couple of rocks and he’s back to sleep.

Doolies joined me in the study and sent me upstairs to check on Tiger. I changed her diaper (just a small amount of pee), hugged her, and tucked her in. Hopefully it’ll stick this time. She’s been much better about not crying at night when we leave her in the room. She’s reminds herself: “no sad,” and manages not to be sad. Much better than I would accomplish.

Tiger is still rolling around but it’s not as bad now. Dinosaur is snoring away.

I’ll put a few more minutes on the clock because of the interruption. My back and fingers are starting to hurt from spending too much time sitting in this chair programming. And not exercising. That’s probably part of it as well. We’ve been on break from Naginata—the break lengthened by my skipping the last few classes of the quarter because of a strong lack of sleep. I’ve been trying to get my (two) friends to join the class where they live. Of the people I would want to join, they all happen to live close to a dojo. Regrettably that’s the easy part. The hard part is convincing them that hitting people on the head is fun.

Doolies wants to watch anime in a bit. Crunchyroll was recently made available on Xbox and we’re working through the first of what I expect will be a long list of quality anime. We’ll finish this series soon. It is satisfyingly dark (even if it’s taken me more than half the episodes to figure out which character is which). Dinosaur doesn’t seem to mind sleeping on Doolies during the show, which is all for the best.

I’m hopeful I’ll Horrible-ize the animes as well. While I’ve doodled a few new ones lately, I haven’t spent the time on a (what is for me) a high-art Horrible. Hopefully this anime will inspire the return to long sessions of detailed doodling.

Ah, my brain finally reaches its empty state at the end of my scribbling. Tiger also reached the ends of her scribbles and has been still for the past ten minutes (as I’ve gone back and added a few more details in the above paragraphs between rocking the dinosaur). The music is still playing . . . and I spoke to soon. She just turned over and is waving her hands in the air. Poor Tiger. She’s grabbing all her stuffed animals (she has three with her in the crib: a large dog, a baby Elmo, and a baby Cookie Monster). She’s hugging them and rolling around.

Okay, I went back and edited again, swimming way past my thirty minutes. Tiger is still awake and Dinosaur is looking forward to snuggling with his mother. Let’s hope for sleepy Tiger’s and a strong finish to the anime.