This Sunday it seems has, in one way or another, revolved almost totally around food.

Woke up this mornin' da-diddy-da-dum!!
Porridge, as we forgot yesterday and had promised. very yummy of course, especially on such a wet cold morning.
That would be around nine.
Then the Church meal, which occupies about 4 hours. Got home after the washing and locking up just after half past two.
En route for home, round to the Vicarage to deliver the last half dozen rock cakes. Mrs Vicar was taken ill this morning, so he couldn't stay for the meal after the service.
Within an hour I walked round to MS, with LC and Stan, to deliver him a copy of each of the publications that use his excellent photography and present a cheque for the same. We had cake.

Then before you know it was teatime.
Goes like that sometimes.

Still raining.
Hope the Tooth Fairy makes it tonnight through the storm - Stan's triumphantly lost his third tooth.
No tears this time, just a broad, cheeky smile when he wiggled it out in his bedroom an hour ago.

This is the second night of our pro-active campaign to restore a full night's sleep for Tx. Nora has slept through only three times so far, which is normal of course but it's easy to forget how draining this becomes after a while.
It affects me very little because I sleep through everything, but Tx is getting those familar synptoms that lack of a full night's sleep eventually bring. At six months, N is showing the signs now of waking habitually rather than out of any great neccessity, several times a night, so the time is now right to deal with it.
Tx has been experimenting with rubbing and holding different parts of her body (circular rubbing of the tummy worked on LC, while St preferred his chest to be rubbed). Seems Nora settles quite quickly if you hold her hand, which worked well last nght on the first two occasions of her waking - about 10.30 and again at midnight.
I stayed up for both of these (and I am now) and she fell asleep again without feeding. As I said, it's not something she needs now.
But at 3am she woke and cried and would not settle for an hour and a half. We tried all the tricks, and that was the hard one. nothing worked, but tshe she did eventually exhaust her screams and slept for an hour.
Tx then fed her at half past five and put her back into her cot at six, where she slept till seven.

Tonight so far is already 'better'. Trx fed her, as usual, and then wrapped her into bed just before eight. She didn't wake till 11, and I heard her first stirring from downstairs. Sat with her only ten minutes, just holding her hand,and she quickly snuffled off again. Tx was awake, but at this stage that isn't the point. Within two or three days of this, Nora will not wake at least this first time, and Tx will not be woken herself until after midnight.
It's not just the broken nights that wear her down, its the backache, lifting baby in and out of cot. That eases quickly we know, and its a good monitor of where we are at.
Six month Syndrome, we call it. Tx body has a spurt towards some kind of rehab, which is usually exemplified by backache. This in turn we deal with by this action of tackling the infant's sleep pattern.
Limiting the daytime naps now too works quite effectively.
We have managed to shift her two hour daytime sleep to the period before lunch and then she will be awake until bed time.

I'm expecting her to wake again in a few minutes.
I'll sit with her again and then go to bed myself. I've not missed either the beautiful simplicity of a cuddly wife when I slip in beside her.
Such times come and go, sometimes far away. But then the circle turns and these moments start to come back round again.

The cakes are all done and very very scrummy - I have spent the last hour and a half enjoying "The Two Towers" on DVD.

What an awesome film. I have always rated it as that, but now, halfway throught he book again, it is even better. I read to the end of Book III alst night, midway through The Two Towers, and now having seen the film of the same I can completely understand why certain edits were made and some story lines slightly shifted.
There are, so far, two fundamental differences.
In the book, Merry and Pippin's meeting with Gandalf the White in Fangorn is not described. Instead, they are taken to Isengard by Treebeard, where they witness the storming of Orthanc by the Ents.
In the film version, Treebeard suggests that "The White Wizard will know what to do" and he takes the hobbits to Gandalf himself.
Second main diversion is at Edoras, in Rohan. Instead of riding out with a company of men to Helm's Deep, leaving Eowyn as guardian of the City as in Tolkein's version, the film instead has the King ordering that the city be deserted, and all the people flee to the fortress leaving the city empty.
That's the first disc anyway. Gollum is absolute genius. Peter Jackson's direction, weaving the two journeys together and interchanging from one to the other is really effective.
I never noticed before how close the dialogue is to the book either.
Treebeard comes across in the film a little whimsical and is somehow more 'fantastical' than even the Orcs and Elves, themselves of course entirely made up. The tree herder is somehow more believable in the book - more is made of the significance of the Entmoot, a quite brilliant literary device enabling Tolkien to expose the weakness in Saruman's complex psychology