The loneliness of a long distance hasher

Awkward like Sunday morning

Last run: 5 miles (this morning) Days to London Marathon: 173 (I think)

See, now I'm jealous. I too had noticed the rather fine weather and promised myself that I would achieve one child free run this weekend. Despite an interrupted night (1am calls for water from The Heir, plus 3.45 and 6.35 am milk demands from The Spare) Sunday morning still looked like the best bet.

But....Ed had contracted some upgraded version of the Spanish 'flu that The Heir had kindly imported from school (how do Lemons and Sally do it?) and his parenting skills were a little impeded by the need to lie under a duvet and sweat. So the window of opportunity shrank down to The Spare's morning nap. By 9.15 I had got up, showered, dressed, put a load of washing on, fed the cat, fed The Spare, made some tea, changed two sets of nappies and admired several generations of lego spaceships approximately 74 times. The Heir had been bribed into good behaviour by a promise of hot chocolate when I returned. Now, the only thing between me and my run was getting The Spare to go for a nap.

There we stood.

Eyeball to eyeball, mano a mano.

Ladies (possibly even gentlemen) when you were a girl did you ever have one of those dolls with weighted eyelids so they would automatically shut when it was laid down? Well, I'm here to tell you that's a BIG FAT LIE. It's propaganda put about by someone with a vested interest in you not knowing the truth about babies. What actually happens is this: you lay them down (in the pram in this case) and their little eyes fly open and fix you with a beady stare that means 'I know your game'. They don't even blink, which is rather unnerving. I move onto phase 2, which is wheeling the pram round the block for five minutes, during which The Spare still hasn't blinked, let alone shut his eyes.

Fortunately I had the nuclear option. The key thing in these situations is not to panic, but to pretend not to care. Whistling casually, I left the pram and occupant in the hall and positively sauntered off to do the washing up. I tickled the cat. I boiled the kettle in a relaxed kinda way. I made a leisurely shopping list. And sure enough when I looked in the pram again he had drifted off - silently, obviously, otherwise I might have noticed.

At which point his mother, naturally, ran away.

And I wonder why he's afraid to go to sleep.

posted by Hermione @ 8:52 PM