So I'm at work...
How miserable, right? Well I played my hand too soon. I asked for a month off in February to go home for Chinese New Year - Alex and I decided three weeks was the least it would be worth two 13-hour flights with the baby - and, in a fit of impatience, said I would do some Christmas shifts for my old team if it sweetened the deal. Offer accepted.

It's not like we celebrate Christmas. Scrooges that we are, Alex and I haven't even bought baby a Christmas present because he thinks (yes, it is him) that she already has more toys than she needs. I can't help but agree since we had to buy another Muji carton this weekend to cram them in... And there are still toys on the living room floor.

But every day I've left for work these last three days, baby has been sobbing, tear- and snot-smeared, crying 'No, no, noooo,' as I walk out the door. I feel like a skunk. Especially since if I call home or Alex calls me later. Because my cooing down the phone is inevitably answered, at the end, with more sobs and that heart-rending 'Noooo'.

Doesn't help that she's teething again and so is more clingy than usual. Well more clingy than in the last two weeks anyway.

I don't know where the time goes
But it's not here. I think it's because I've accepted that I need to sleep for eight hours each night. So after Bel goes to sleep, it's all I can do to rouse myself, brush my teeth and then crash into bed myself. Out by 11pm, up between 6 or 7am. Sigh. I can't wait for the couple of days off I have after this until 2 January. Only three more hours on shift to go...