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I feel I am in the golden time of parenting right now. Aside from my son’s thirst for danger, we’ve got two brilliant kids, both at ages where they’re full of spirit, fun and funniness and both getting smart in their own ways.
There’s a lot of stuff about farts and poo to cope with (but to be honest I never really got sick of that myself) but it’s the little rituals and catchphrases that I am most enjoying. I know there will come a time when they will stop doing these things and I know I will miss them and get a bit teary when I think about them. But right now, they’re still happening and I know they’re impermanent and so I am really enjoying them.
Both kids, whenever they have been out elsewhere without us, will crash back into the house and shout “Mummy! Daddy! We’re home!†in the same sing song intonation. They know it’s a catchphrase. Sometimes Ernie will do it when we’re together and not at home and he gets why that is funny. But it’s so nice to hear and it’s done with such joy.
When I pick Phoebe up from school she will always unload her book bag, coat and water bottle on to me and then run off gleefully trilling “I’m free! I’m free!†She runs right to the school gates and hides behind a wall and then jumps out at me. I love seeing her skittish and knowing run and again just the sheer pleasure of getting her time back (though I am sure she loves school). One day she will be too cool to do this. But what she doesn’t realise is that then she won’t be as cool as she is now. It’s brilliant.
I took her to her swimming lesson today for the first time in ages and she told me I had to watch and wasn’t allowed on my phone. Which was hard. But she was right about that. Why am I letting these moments fade away whilst I stare at screens. I still did it a bit to be fair, but mainly I watched her and she’s very impressive, bombing up the pool on her float and diving underwater and swimming a few feet. She read me her school books as we waited in the car, putting on stupid voices and winking at the whole thing, but enjoying that in her Robin Hood story, John Little turned out to be really big. As long as she gets irony then I have done my job.
I started up the European Super League of Self-Playing Snooker tonight. It was a tough decision to work out which 8 players would be forming the breakaway league and there have been some big protests from fans. But MONEY is more important than fans and thanks to our sponsor Durex, the winner of this tournament will get a purse of several hundred million pounds. Durex for when you want to shoot your balls all over the place, but don’t want to get an in off. Will be up in the usual places on Wednesday.Thanks to Ian Durex for the hundreds of millions of pounds. Quite a gamble for him, given viewing figures are in the dozens. But he knows what he's doing. And hasn't had to spend any money on kids.
