Peace at Last

I have a new favourite moment of the day. It comes sometime between 6.30pm and 7.00pm. The new moment is blissful, peaceful and so full of love I could just eat it. Can you eat a moment? I want to eat this one.

Firstly, Duck goes to bed. Somehow, largely thanks to my hard working husband, the 11 month old whose sleep patterns nearly killed me has turned into a 1 year old whose sleep patterns are edging towards actual real-life normality. He goes to bed. Just like that. Then he's asleep. It's weird to be honest. I love it. But that's not the moment. After I lay a 'sleepy but awake' Duck  (check me out, just like the books say!) down next to his huge Iggle Piggle (a cuddly toy that is almost as big as him), I come downstairs.

I find my big grown up, pant-wearing (as yet unsuccessfully) Bambi watching TV. None of your babyish shows for him anymore, oh no, now he's all about Gigglebiz, which is a bit like the Fast Show... a lot like the Fast Show, but with Mr Tumble in. Next to him is my husband who always, ALWAYS, gets tired when it's the boys' bedtimes. I like to think my mood-lighting and bedtime routine voice is just so soporific that even adults can't resist its charms. They are lying together on the floor, Bambi is awake, Daddy is more often than not, asleep. That's pretty cute, but it's not my new favourite moment.

The 3rd Christmas is the sweetest

Bambi will be 2 1/2 this Christmas. It's his 3rd one, technically but will be his first proper one. The first one he can anticipate, the first time he knows who Father Christmas is, the first time he'll have to buy present for people and keep them a surprise.

His first Christmas he was only 6 months old. I spent the day predominantly worrying about whether we could alter his life-consuming nap schedule to correlate with his other baby cousins' naps for us all to have dinner together. (We did but dinner lasted approximately 10 minutes due to 2 babies and a 2 year old whose naps were all out of whack!)

His second Christmas was about as special a Christmas as you could ever have, in retrospect. At the time it was a bizarre kind of dream. He was 18 months old and had been whisked away at bedtime 2 nights before Christmas to Granny's house, where he spent 2 days with cousins and uncles and aunts, being spoiled rotten. On Christmas morning he opened one present with his cousins before getting in the car to come home. He walked into our house to find a brand new, tiny, sleeping baby brother in a Moses basket surrounded by other presents. It makes me weep to think about their first meeting on the Christmas morning but of course he won't remember it, and wouldn't have understood the significance of the moment anyway. 

Preschool Birthday Party

A few weeks ago we got a birthday party invitation tucked into our tray at preschool. It was the first party invitation Bambi had ever been given. I was much more excited about it than Bambi, especially as it would be a nice way to meet all the children he goes to preschool with and, more importantly, their mums!

I RSVP'd a few days later, not wanting to seem TOO keen and then forgot all about it. We usually talk about things that are happening soon quite a lot. It seems to help him be less of a deer in headlights during a new experience and gives him lots of opportunity to reassure himself, for example by having the chance to ask if I'm definitely going to stay with him! Well this time, we were busy worrying about house contracts, so we forgot to 'prep' him until the morning of the party. He didn't seem phased by the idea at all and didn't even question whether I would go with him or not, he just assumed (rightly) that I would!

So off we went, leaving Daddy and Duck at home napping (yes, both of them). I was quite looking forward to meeting the Mum of the birthday boy, partly because she doesn't do the preschool drop-off, so we'd only ever seen the boy's Grandma, but mostly because her middle son has the same (pretty rare) name as Bambi so I knew I'd like her. Great minds think alike.

Bedtime stories

Bambi is a big book lover. He could (and would) recite the Gruffalo word for word if you asked him. Or even if you didn't.

Ditto Dogger, Five Minutes Peace, Each Peach Pear Plum, and a bizarre old book from my husband's childhood called Mr Gumpy's Outing in which a man has a boat and he lets farm animals get on it "so long as they don't bleat/kick/flap" and so on. Then they all misbehave and fall in the water, then they have a tea party and Mr Gumpy says goodbye.