You would not believe how little sleep I get, and I get a lot more sleep than my wife

It is 10:55pm and my one year-old daughter has just, finally, fallen asleep. I know with relative certainty that she will be awake again, screaming, within an hour or so, and also that there will be nothing that I can do to remedy this situation; that burden falls entirely upon my heroic* wife. I hasten to add that that this injustice is of our daughter's choosing, not my own. She will accept nothing but her mother's unconditional company for hours on end. Invariably we end up with her in our bed, where she prefers to lie horizontally, ensuring that my wife and I are left with an inch or two each in which to seek comfort and sleep in vain. I usually endure a lot of kicking as well. But at least the screaming stops.

She has never been a good sleeper, but the situation escalated a few weeks ago when, like just about everybody else in the country, we all contracted a nice bit of norovirus. Cue a few days of spectacularly horrendous vomiting, diarrhoea, headaches, stomach cramps and general near death experience. Our youngest appeared at first to have suffered slightly less than the rest of us. But her affliction soon developed into a succession of nasty colds, made all the worse by the relentless period of molar growth upon which her mouth decided to embark at the same time. All of this, coupled with her being at just the right age to develop some separation anxiety, would be enough to make anybody struggle with their slumber. For our daughter the increased sleeplessness became a habit and is now a pattern, to which we have had no choice but to resign ourselves.

When our older daughter went through a similar phase, we solved it (with what only now seems like relative ease) by following the textbook to the letter: letting her scream it out, before learning to get herself to sleep, free from dependency on any parent-shaped psychological crutches. This is not so easy the second time around, because we feel duty-bound to minimise the screaming of our youngest in the interests of our eldest (who is actually remarkably good at sleeping through all this). So, ultimately, we relent every night, despite knowing that this is really prolonging the problem.

Our latest tactic is to remove her dummy on the grounds that it exacerbates her aforementioned dependency on psychological crutches. I believe I have discussed previously the growing need to go cold turkey on the dummy anyway, and people who know about these things say that it can be surprisingly helpful in solving the sleep problem. So far it has merely meant that, when she inevitably did awaken, it took my wife longer than ever to becalm her. Eventually she brought the little insomniac downstairs, where of course she cut off any recriminations at the pass by slipping immediately into her extremely cute daytime persona. Despite my best efforts I was delighted - having only recently arrived home from work and missed bedtime - to spend some time with her. Nevertheless, I am preparing myself for another night of being kicked in bed by those cute little feet.

Having said that, it's now midnight and she's still asleep.

I really must go to bed.

*I read a passage of David Foster Wallace's semi-autobiographical novel The Pale King yesterday, in which the protagonist describes an inspirational lecture he heard as a student. In this speech, true heroism is defined as persistence in the mundane, uncelebrated commitment to the detail of their duties displayed by all the quietly diligent people of the world. Apply this to parenting instead of accountancy and my wife is the greatest hero of them all.

Landmarks

Our house has seen more landmarks than an open-top bus in the last few weeks. Our older daughter celebrated her second birthday a few weeks ago. We had an ambitious, albeit casual party, which involved inviting my wife's extended family and my own to our unsuspecting house for the day. It all went rather well, really. Not content with spilling into the garden, we decided to redistribute the whole clan to the park in town where an uncle and cousin of my wife's run a miniature railway. This made for excellent family fun, threatened only by the painful logistics of getting all the cars out of our road in the necessary order. My wife's expertly crafted Gruffalo cake was devoured in record time, unlikely friendships were forged between distant cousins and a good time was had by all.

Our daughter has commemorated her new, older age by demonstrating increased intellectual prowess. Her alphabet recital now verges on perfection. She sings it as follows:

"A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H...J, K, L, Ememma P, Q, You, S, Teedees, Doubles, Y, Zow, Z. Now I know my A, B, Six, Next time won't you sings? Yay!"

Clearly, this is a vast improvement on the more common and predictable version you may have heard previously. What makes it all the more special is the unconfined delight with which she performs it. How much gusto do you put into your alphabet?

My wife and I have nervously enforced another development upon our eldest. The cot in which she has until now spent each night has been discarded in favour of a big, shiny, children's bed. This was a sudden and risky manoeuvre on our part but, much like the ambitious birthday party, it seems to have worked. She has taken to the new bed with commensurate ease; never questioning the transition or contemplating sleeping badly as a result. Pride and relief are competing to be my reaction to all this. She makes an excellent two-year-old.

Not to be outdone, our younger daughter turned 0.5/half/six months today. She will soon inherit the cot vacated by her sister. She is not quite ready to do so yet, but does have numerous other achievements under her belt. After months of deceptively suggestive drooling, her first tooth finally emerged last week. It's a bottom middle one, which in my opinion is the optimum first tooth location for maximum cuteness. Yesterday it was joined by the other bottom middle one. A cliche about London buses would not go amiss here.

Her other, major new talent is rolling over. Now. It most certainly is not a competition. But, for the record, she reached this milestone a couple of weeks later than her sister had. However, in our eldest's case the milestone was reached after a long and strenuous journey. This time around, it seemed relatively effortless. After a couple of trial runs a few weeks ago, over she went. It was as though she had always been able to complete the move but had simply chosen to wait until that moment. As if to reinforce this impression, she left it a few weeks before repeating the trick yesterday, when she went into overdrive.

Now she rolls over more than a Euromillions jackpot and quicker than Nick Clegg at a cabinet meeting when David Cameron has suggested privatising something else. Down Nick. Good boy Nick.

I digress. Our daughter practises an entirely more positive and admirable form of rolling over and, furthermore, she eagerly brings up her knees each time in readiness for the next stage: crawling. I'm sure it will be some time before this skill is mastered. In a selfish way, I hope so.

I need a rest.