Skip to main content

10 Things I've Learned as a Parent This Week (#18)

1.Wiping the arse of a wriggling baby should be an Olympic sport.

2.It takes 1.5 hours to tidy our house but a mere 37 seconds to untidy it.

3.Our washing machine is more overworked than a Victorian pit pony.

4.I have no idea what me and my wife had conversations about before the kids were born.

5.Dribble rash is minging.

6.If one of our twins keeps rolling about like this he'll be applying for a travel visa before the summer.

7.It's far too easy to sit on the baby monitor microphone, hear an almighty noise come through the receiver from the next room, not realise this has been caused by your own clumsy derrière and thus assume you're being burgled. (This is also a great way to get the exact temperature of your buttocks.)

8.It's possible for next door's dog to bark so loud outside your baby's window you'll be convinced your child is part-wolf.

9.New kitchen cleaning products excite me more now than new music. FML.

10.We've passed more germs back and forth in our house this week than a game of spin the bottle at a VD clinic.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Time I Screamed at my Kids

Before my kids arrived I swore I’d never shout at them. But choosing how to approach parenthood before your kids are born is like a caterpillar deciding what kind of butterfly they’re gonna be while they’re still building the cocoon. ‘I’ll still do loads of charity work, of course. And I’ll be REALLY nice to moths too, even though they’ll probably hate me because I’ll be so bloody gorgeous.’ Theory and reality are like sugar and shit. I’ve raised my voice to my kids more times than I can count. Often just to shout ‘STOP SHOUTING!’ which I’m aware doesn’t set a great example. ‘You should NEVER shout at your kids.’ And that’s fine. In theory. Because everything’s fine in theory. The Slimfast diet is a piece of piss until day two when you’ve had three hours sleep and someone offers you a Wagon Wheel. Of course, I never WANT to shout at them. I love them more than words can describe. But those you love are also the ones blessed with the innate ability to boil your piss q...

The Time I Smeared Shit on the Duvet

My wife and I developed our parenting systems through trial and error. One of the earliest rules we’d introduced was that if it was after 5am and one of the babies became unsettled, we wouldn’t waste our time trying to get them back down in their cot - we’d just bring them in with us. After a nice cuddle in our bed, they’d normally settle back down, barring the occasional impromptu fanny gouge or affable bollock kick. (Babies are the most violent sleepers on the planet, easily capable of committing GBH in the middle of reaching for their dummy.) Our twins were six months old. I was fast asleep. At least, the deepest sleep you can get once your kids arrive. My pre-kids sleep used to be the nocturnal equivalent of deep sea diving. Nowadays I’m lucky if I can submerge my toes in a puddle. Early on, my sleep was lighter than a Ryvita biscuit who’d been having it off with a helium canister they’d met on Tinder. Everything woke me up. Some nights I’d just lie there, bewi...

The Time I Embarrassed Myself on a Bouncy Castle

Kids love bouncy castles. And why not? They’re bouncy and unpredictable, like Kanye West on a pogo stick. But just like Calpol, crayons and eating your own bogeys, the allure of the bouncy castle tends to dissipate as we reach adulthood. I’m not someone who lists ‘castle bouncing’ as a hobby these days. My kids, on the other hand, love a good bouncy castle. The bouncier the better. The only thing they love more than a GOOD bouncy castle is a REALLY BAD bouncy castle. Especially those ones that haven’t undergone a decent risk assessment since mullets were cool. In fact, the more dubious the health and safety standards appear to a casual bystander, the more keen my kids are to dive on headfirst and find the hazards. So. We’re at a farm park. We’re enjoying the standard parental farm park experience - the kids are interested in everything EXCEPT the very farm animals that we just paid a whopping £37.50 to visit. (BTW - My son’s favourite animal at Chester Zoo was ...