Contentment

Had quite a tiring day at work yesterday.

My eyes were half-closed when Angie was giving Jaimie her 9.30pm feed, while changing her in preparation for bedtime. When Angie asked me “你可以吗？”, in relation to my earlier promise to take on the task of putting the little one to bed, I said yes. Took my best efforts to open my eyes during that instant, so that my affirmative reply would look and sound a bit more convincing, both to her as well as to myself.

The biggest challenge about patting babies to sleep is this - Thou shalt not succumb to the sleepy bug thyself, before thou's subject does. Else, it would be Game Over. Next better player, please.

Wah, going to be a REALLY tough one, I thought, considering the state I was in at that moment.

The instant Angie turned off the lights and left the room, I plonked onto the bed, lying next to Jaimie. Yah...Jae got to sleep on our bed last night cos she wet her mattress while mommy was changing her diapers. As I commenced my lullaby crooning, which sounded more like monotonous chanting, I couldn't help but wonder if I'd be the one responding to the hum-drums, instead of Jae. There was a real danger of that happening. After all, with all her tossings and turnings and sitting up and lying back down, she was demonstrating at least 10 times higher energy level than her very much subdued, quasi-static Papa. Can't allow that to happen, I told myself, cos Jae might roll herself over the make-shift pillow barricades and off the bed. Oh, no.

It wasn't until about 10 minutes later that I managed to put together sufficient cognitive resources to realise that the reason why Jae was tossing so much might be because she was feeling warm. Aiyo. I got up and grabbed a fan (those hand-held rattan type ones, recently purchased at Tiong Bahru Market), and started fanning. Jae's little botak head has always been the 'heat sink', where it gets warmest. So that was where I directed my mechanically induced convection. It worked. Her movements subsided and eventually she quietened down to her steady state, rhythmic bedtime breathing.

I'm not sure if it was the elation over mission accomplished, or that the time I spend patting Jae to sleep actually allowed me to be rested. When I put down the fan in my hands and picked up my glasses, I actually felt quite good...like, re-energised. I went over to the study where Angie was in, and quickly found out that the Singnet broadband connection was down. Tried resetting the system which didn't do any good. I ended up watching "The Last King of Scotland" DVD, till 0045hrs.

When I went back to the bedroom, I found mother and daughter both sound asleep. It did not take long at all for me to join them in slumberland. I remembered the last thought that strayed into my mind just before I left the conscious realm - that everything I'd ever need in this world, I now have with me, right on this very bed. And then I fell into blissful asleep.