Theory

If your baby sleeps in busy areas they will grow accustomed to noise and sleep through things - but if they are in a quiet room, they will always need quiet to sleep.

Practice:

In my house, the baby sleeps through riots or wakes up at the slightest noise apparently at random.

Feet

On Monday, before Linnea poisoned herself but somehow failed to actually die, I stepped on a model like this one the children had left on our upstairs landing - Rob's Dad brought it home from Greece one year because he thought it was clever and we've had it since. Anyway, I stepped on it at the top of the stairs, and hopped to the wardrobe where we keep the plasters, and I didn't bleed much on the rugs or anything, so that's quite good. The plaster - and the wound, you may then infer - is on the ball of my foot, just below the big toe - you know, the bit one walks on all the time. The graze in the arch of my foot, from the same model, stopped bleeding without a plaster.

Yesterday I just walked myself tired and got pins and needles.

Today I was dancing to various children's rhymes - Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes, the Hokey Cokey, that sort of thing - to entertain Astrid, and stubbed my toe on the wire frame of her giraffe-print bouncy chair, breaking my big toenail and tearing my tights in the process. So I have a plaster on that foot too, though on a less crucial part of it.

When I grow up I'm going to learn not to be so clumsy, apparently.