meet Marcus

Isabelle's new sock monkey. She ordered it from this catalogue three days ago and made me promise to make it the very same night. Which I didn't, due to 'tired/can't be bothered/let's watch Inspector Morse' state of mind. Then, having gone to bed at the catholic hour of 11 pm, I woke up at 1 am, completely WIDE AWAKE. After trying with no success to go back to sleep, I crept downstairs and roamed the lower ranges of the house (not, as you might think doing anything vaguely useful such as packing a just-in-case-hospital-bag (still not done!), selecting music I might want to listen to at some point in the next two months or so, or even tidying up the local pigsty, no, I was collecting all the seashells that have made it into this house in the past few months of almost daily beach walks, getting them into one big pile on the dining-room table, in preparation for labour) (yes, I know, my sanity level has definitely dropped beyond 'questionable' by now). I roamed until 5:30 or so, then finally collapsed into bed, to be woken up a very short hour later with a 'Mama, where is my monkey?', 'Mama, did you make my monkey?'. I must have mumbled something along the lines of 'too tired, sorry, next time better...' because the next thing I know, there is this wailing siren in my bed (literally and figuratively). So what did I do? Did I, like any normal person, say to Marc 'remove the child, I must sleep', roll around and go back to oblivion. No, I did not. Instead, I got out of bed. Crawled downstairs. Put two chairs in front of the sewing machine. Made a sock monkey.

To give her credit, she did help me stuff it.

And was very patient with how long it took, as well as all the swearing that went with the process. She even did some personal coaching in the form of 'Mama, as soon as you're done with this you can go to bed...', the effect of which was somewhat tempered by the repeated 'Is it done yet?' that burst out of her every ten minutes like a mad cuckoo.

Anyway, it was worth it in the end. Although not a 'thing of beauty', Isabelle is mad about her (obviously, Marcus is a girl) and drags her proudly around everywhere we go. Plus, I got to sleep most of the rest of the day, with everybody's blessing. Including Marcus's.