Sleeps, books DVDs

The nanny’s nap spell has broken.

After a weekend in which I was proud to have gotten The Little Madam to take 2-hour and almost-3-hour naps respectively, I arrived home from work this afternoon to hear TLM squealing away in her room as though determined to prove that she was wide awake. There was to be no nap today, and no doubt the catnap she took in the car on the way home from her outing at the Botanic Gardens had something to do with this.

So TLM’s bedtime tonight was a full hour early, at 6pm (i.e. 5pm in the afternoon if you’re going by real – non-Daylight Saving – time). Still, she went to sleep almost straight away and as long as she’s not ready for action at 5am tomorrow I’m fine with that.

And I’ve broken my parenting literature habit. For the last week or so I’ve been engrossed in To the Poles (without a beard) by Catharine Hartley. It’s a true account of a woman whose obsession with walking to the South Pole, without any previous polar experience whatsoever and almost no physical training, drives her to become (with one other) the first British woman to walk to the South Pole. And then she decides to have a go at the North Pole as well.

It’s pretty riveting reading, although Catherine does come across as a sort of Bridget Jones on ice (there’s the 30-something-ness, the drinking, the fags, the embarrassments – though not the romances).

Now that I’ve run out of Gilmore Girls DVDs to watch in the two hours or so between TLM’s bedtime and my plunge into the depths of sleepiness – at around 9pm – it’s back to the Buffy’s. The Season is Four, the episodes are This year’s girl and Who are you – or, the ones where Buffy and Faith swap bodies. It’s so very Face/Off.