Sweet dreams are what I'm longing for. Honestly, I'd even settle for bland dreams, perhaps even bad dreams, if they meant I'd get some sleep. I love my precious cherub. I love her even when she wakes me up only an hour after I get to bed, because she is hungry. And again at 1am because she wants a cuddle, an hour and a half later because she's hungry again, and at 4am because she wants to play. And I love her even through all the tears and screams and back-arching-thrashing that follow "No darling, it's sleepy-time not play-time," which last for TWO HOURS, causing Mr B and me to spend the rest of the morning feeling nauseous from exhaustion and trying not to be unreasonably snippy with each other.

By day, Madeleine will only sleep in her pram. Not the cot, not the car, not anywhere but the pram. And she won't be fooled by a gentle rocking back and forth, it has to be full-on forward motion for Her Majesty. So I pound the pavement, for at least four hours a day, every single day. I have blisters on my blisters, on my heels and on the balls of my feet and even on the top of my toes, and I barely even feel them any more. The heels of my ankle boots have worn thin. You'd think I'd be super-svelte by now, wouldn't you, with all that exercise? Unfortunately my long walks all-too-often take me past a really great cupcake place, so I suspect we are calorie-neutral.

In between walking and being awake in the middle of the night, I am working a lot. I'm up to my bloodshot, sleep-deprived eyeballs in unmet deadlines.

The point of this rather self-indulgent rant is to say "Hello! I miss you guys!" I miss blogging. I miss reading your blogs. I miss my creative projects and taking photographs and drawing pictures and thinking up stories and writing them down. When you are time-poor and sleep-deprived, creativity is so often the first thing to go. Who has the energy to create when you are putting everything you have into just surviving? And as a writer, my job is to create, so any residual creative energy has to go there (my clients are paying me, my blog isn't).

But I'm really going to try. I'm well aware that my complaint could come from the mouths of thousands of mothers the world over. So I just have to suck it up and BUILD the energy to do a little bit for me. Because giving myself time out is the best thing I can do for me AND my family. Which is why I am here, telling you all about this. And why I will try, TRY to take more photos and tell more stories and read more blogs be present in this little space again. How are you guys going?

Photo by Jochen Spalding from here.