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Had a heart-stopping moment tonight. We'd lit our fire and it was burning brilliantly, but as my wife and I brought our dinner into the room, the new carbon monoxide alarm went off. Surely not. It couldn't be happening again. Also I didn't want to leave my warm snug and get the kids out of bed and go and stand in the freezing slush outside. I was seriously planning to ignore it again, even after all we'd been through, due to it happening at such an inconvenient time.
But then I realised that on opening the door my wife had just knocked the vaccuum cleaner on to the alarm test button. The screen showed no parts of CO per million. Hooray! We could stay in and drink old-fashioneds and I could make some foolish purchases of electronic items whilst drunk (but none of them from America - so back off Fed-ex and your repo men).
We may be coming out of the tunnel a little bit now. Ernie is sleeping pretty well at night time and I must be getting a luxurious four or five hours of continuous sleep, which is enough to make me feel like a God. He’s become a very smily baby, after being a bit anxious and poorly at the start and Phoebe is being a cheeky and playful delight, who believes she needs no help with anything, and tries to do everything. Parenthood gives you a whole lot of stress and troubles, punctuated every eight or nine months where you get maybe five minutes where everything is fine. We got our five minutes today and it’s enough to sustain me until September. I even started thinking that we should maybe have another one.
There was more snow today and Phoebe and me had our first snowball fight, in which I lobbed snowballs from a distance, giving her an easy chance to get out of the way and she threw snowballs at me from about six inches away, meaning she often actually hit me. But she also loved just running around and looking at her footprints and then saying “Footprintsâ€. The exponential growth of her language and comprehension is dazzling. We’ve been with her for nearly three years now and for so much of that time she was a useless idiot, and it just makes these tiny achievements seem impossibly impressive.
The booster seat that caused me so much frustration is now in the car and she’s very proud to be using a grown up seat belt (and delighted not to be having her skin pinched by the old harness).
Most kids will never know the struggles and sacrifices their parents went through to raise them. Which is why I am glad I have this blog, so I can sit her down on her 18th birthday and make her read every fucking entry. That will be her gift. Remember that snowball fight we had when you were nearly 3 Phoebe? I was deliberately missing you, you idiot. Except that one time when I was trying to miss you and actually hit you. Sorry about that. Thank you for coming into my life. It's a lot better with your around. However annoying you've been as a teenager.
