I'm in the middle of one of those indefinite napping periods, so excuse me if this gets oddly disjointed. Blake is making the slow transition to one nap a day, but he is hampered by the fact that his days are super-long for a toddler (up at 5, down at 7 or 8 or...) Whenever he hits the 5th hour of waking, we know he'll be a fussy little beast, but there's very little we can do. He's supposed to be transitioning to one nap at this stage of his life, but I was under the impression that a "healthy rested baby" would go at least 11 hours at night as well.

Anyway, all of this is to say that he's been asleep for over an hour and he may be down for another 2. Or he may get up in the next five minutes, and then it's showtime.

Other interesting things about Blake: he's figured out how to liberate himself from the playpen. He's finally tall enough to hoist himself onto the rail, and from there to the floor. Worse: he's absolutely confident about this feat, and will do it whenever he gets bored with baby jail. We've seen him starting to crawl out of his crib, but the crib rail's too high for him to risk it. It's only a matter of time before he takes that leap...and then it's all over. We'll never keep him in his bed ever again.

Is it too late to Ferberize?

(I joke. Don't worry, I'll soon adjust to total sleep deprivation in the form of a little restless flopper and kicker. I'll make do with the vision trails and the inability to make decisions. It'll be fun - like tripping on all those hallucinogenic drugs I never got around to taking. Who said it was too late for mind-altering experiences?!)

I had a weird dream last night. As you can imagine, my dreaming was fraught with the anxiety of yesterday's Big Secret Problem, and it infiltrated all kinds of weird psychological corners. For instance: in my dream, I decided that my Uncle Bru didn't break his nose falling from a rope in Air Force training (as was told to me in childhood); rather, he was bashed for some homosexual slip up. When dream-me told this to my dream-mom, she went off on a rant about how her brother couldn't even admit that he had cancer when it was perfectly obvious to her that he did! When waking-I told my waking-mom, she surprised me by not dismissing this dream theory out of hand, as did her dream-avatar. We made up our minds to ask him next time we saw him.

But the interesting part for me when I woke up was revisiting this original memory. I was so young when I got this information that I could only picture a sterile grey box - one rope, one gym mat - as the scene of my uncle's accident. The Boy said that it was like I pictured the accident on a green screen, and the basic background was filled in later. It's funny how your ability to imagine changes with your experience and capacity for detail. For all I know, he could have been outside. Or in a busy gym. Or in an alley, punished for deviance. I'll have to ask.

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- Rocketbride's adventure of 10/01/2005 05:23:00 p.m.