Ta Daaa!!! One Hundred Posts. Its official.

Well, here it is, the one hundredth post to Total Bern Out! Its been a long time coming. I actually do have a good reason for the lengthy delay this time. I was home sick. I had a terrible head cold and given that I like to write about the most exciting events in my day, DW advised me that tissue contents are not good blog fodder, no matter how impressive. So I held off. And then DW got sick so I was looking after her. Again with the tissues and not much else. But other things did happen and I will focus on nose. I mean, those.

Firstly, the Adventures of Little Man. A few weeks back I blogged about Little Man's first escape from his baby jail. He was so upset he didn't even know he had done it. DW and I decided not to draw attention to it and all went back to normal. However, last week, as I was starting to get better, Little Man discovered he could climb out of the cot when he was happy. And it also made him happy to do it. So he did it. And he did it again. And again and again. We popped him back each time because, oddly enough, climbing back into his cot does not seem to interest him. All this happened during his afternoon sleep. The real fun began that night.

First of all, we waited until he was really tired. It seemed like a good idea, given that he actually seems to like going to bed sometimes. Well, he was ready for bed, not screaming tired but happy, content and floppy. Princess was already far away in sleepy land so she wasn't likely to be disturbed. It was a good plan. It was a sound plan. It didn't work. Little Man was out of the cot inside 30 seconds. The first time he just came out to the lounge room to see us. The second time, he brought his bedding with him. The third time he just threw his stuffed toys into the lounge and ran back to his room laughing. He would run and hide behind his cot (which was away from the wall to deter him kicking the wall) which made it harder to catch him and put him back. The fourth time, he decided to see what Princess was doing and tried to wake her, but Princess is a heavy sleeper when she first goes to bed. The fifth time, I caught Little Man jumping up and down one Princess, which, apparently she can't sleep through. So now they were both awake.

The sixth time, I had to send Princess back to her bed as well as pull Little Man out from under the cot. The seventh time, we decided to put Princess to bed in the study, and Little man back in his cot. It worked for nearly a whole minute. Little Man climbed out and went looking for Princess. We had left both doors open so the kids wouldn't be frightened, but eventually Princess started coming to get me to report that Little Man was coming into the study and yelling at her to come play. So we closed the door to Little Man's room and waited. He kicked and punched and punched and kicked and wailed and laughed and was generally manic. Eventually he went to sleep. He would probably have stayed asleep is I had not decided to check on him and opened the door, hitting him in the face as he lay sleeping on the floor behind it. I didn't hit him hard, as we have had a similar experience with Princess. Before he could start crying, I scooped him up, only to realise his fingers were stuck under the door. That made him cry.

Its an odd thing. A laughing child cannot be reasoned with or coaxed or pretty much any other form of negotiation. A crying child, on the other hand, can be comforted and settled. I truly didn't mean to hurt Little Man but it did work in my favour because he was desperately tired, getting cold from lying on the ground and had just been hit in the face with a door. And now his fingers hurt. I popped him back in his cot and he was asleep a minute later. No more problems that night.

The following night, he only got out of the cot once and he was put stright back in. He hasn't bothered getting out since. I guess he figured out that it really wasn't worth it. He could do it if he had to but if he didn't, well... what's the point?

Princess came down with gastro on the weekend and was hurling just as much as her little body would allow. She couldn't understand why we wouldn't let her have a drink if she was thirsty, nor why as soon as something, even water, hit her stomach it would come straight back up again. She couldn't understand why Little Man could have normal food and drink but she couldn't. She even kept apologising for throwing up. DW asked her where her happy voice had gone and she replied, "I think Little Man has it somewhere."

Apart from the not throwing up, we could tell she was starting to feel better when she would open negotiations for requests by saying, "You know how I'm sick...?" It was weird to see her so flat and without energy. In a way, it was like watching a fight sequence in The Matrix, where the flurry of activity slows down and stops for a few seconds and then speeds up again back into a whirlwind of action. The forecast if for strong winds and possible lightning strikes. Back to normal then.

Of less blogworthy note, but important nonetheless, is the fact that I have finally finished my novel. It weighed in at 141,000 words, which is good for a novel of this size and genre and has taken me four years to write. Admittedly I wrote only 35,000 words in the first three and a half years, and the remaining words since January, so I'm hoping the next book won't take quite so long. And by the way, when I say finished, what I obviously mean is I am about half way. I have written the whole story and now I have to go back over it and try to make sense of it. MS Word gave up checking my spelling automatically and offered to just do it once I had finished, so there are a few spelling mistakes as well. Also, my grammar is more indicative of my mental processes than of my command of the English language. Suffice it to say that my blog is FAR more grammatically correct, and you have read at least some of that.

But the story is finally complete and now I just have to pretty it up and let DW read it. The rule of thumb is that you should never let friends or family read your book before it is published, unless they are an editor or publisher not only of books, but of the particular genre and style of book you have written. If you do let them read it, you should completely ignore any advice or criticisms offered, both good and bad. They will almost certainly given you incorrect advice that will either leave you thinking you have to change stuff you don't, or leave stuff that needs to be changed.

However, I don't think I can bring myself to present the novel to the world, let alone a publisher, without DW giving her stamp of approval. I value her opinion above all others and I think she has a very good sense of the potential of a work, seeing beyond the rough edges that are necessarily part of a first draft. She is widely read and enjoys the genre, but is not obsessed with it. She knows how to encourage me without over inflating my ego. Well, she knows how to deflate my ego should it become over inflated, whcih it has been known to do. Anyway, the upshot is no one gets to see it until DW gives the all clear.

So that's it from me for the 100th blog. Now that I have finally written the novel, I hope to be posting with greater frequency, but I assume that will only last until I start the next book. I've no shortage of ideas, its just a matter of choosing one.

Ciao!

Thought for the Day: "No bars can hold me, for I am Little Man!!!"