All that comes with it

Amy has a phobia about water getting on her face. This makes washing her hair a little problematic; especially for someone as cack handed as me. We have come up with a number of solutions; from laying on her back in the bath while I scoop water onto her hair, to her wearing goggles. The current method in favour is Amy burying her face in a towel while I pore water on her head with a jug. Each bath she has is preceded by her telling me sternly not to get any water on her, and culminates in her scolding me for failing to live up to my assigned duty.

That’s not to say she doesn’t enjoy baths. There is a large tub of toys beside the bath and she takes great delight in emptying it into the water at any given opportunity. Her favorite activity is attacking me with a squirty rubber seahorse, a game that I made the mistake of finding hilarious the first time she discovered it. To add to my folly I even showed her how to refill the damn thing. Of course I am not allowed to retaliate as that might break the cardinal water on the face rule. Some days I emerge from the bathroom wetter than she does.

Amy and I went to the swimming pool yesterday. We have recently changed our allegiance from the village pool to the large sports centre in Huddersfield. This has primarily been because the sports centre has a special learners pool that is shallow and kept at a warm temperature (unlike the village pool which is maintained at zero degrees Kelvin).

The learner pool also has various toys and foam platforms floating in it. Amy refuses to go on any of these, saying quite reasonably that she will fall off and sink to the bottom. She does enjoy watching other children playing on them however. Unfortunately yesterday the floats were dominated by a very irritating forty something man who appeared desperate to impress his kids. He kept flinging himself on the assorted foam crocodiles and frogs and trying to get them to bear his weight. Things came to a head when he rolled over on a ship and the resulting tidal wave completely engulfed Amy. When the buoyancy of her swim vest brought her bobbing to the surface she was in a real panic. I was just about to go over and give the man a good old punch up the bracket (or at least a telling off), but his wife gave him such a bollocking that it became unnecessary.

After that Amy insisted on going back to the changing room and getting the towel to put on the bench at the side. Every time her face got even a drop of water on it (which was, rather unsurprisingly, pretty often) she had to get out of the pool, thoroughly dry herself, then get back in. This didn’t seem to diminish her enjoyment however, and she caused a good deal of fuss when I finally told her we had to go.

She was so reluctant to leave that she made a break for it while we were in the changing rooms getting dressed. She was just about to get back in the pool by the time I caught up with her. It was a race between myself and the lifeguard as to who could prevent her leaping back in first. I would have won by a mile but I was hampered by the fact that I had to pull my swimming trunks up from round my ankles when the starting pistol went off. Having to make the choice between saving your daughter from a watery grave or running out into the swimming pool with all your bits on show is a decision no man should have to make.

You know how it is. The gradual crescendo of excitement throughout December finally culminates in a glorious cacophony of wrapping paper and overeating; leaving you emotionally and economically drained. In the following days you start searching frantically to something to stave off the feelings of anticlimax, something to distract you from the sight of a Christmas tree that no longer bares the promise of thrills to come. Your sights fix on New Years Eve. And so you find yourself in some horrendously overcrowded pub which, on any other day, you would never even contemplate paying £5 to get into. You drink far too much in a vain effort to persuade yourself you are having a good time; but no amount of alcohol will be enough to dull the pain of parting with the small fortune you are going to have to hand over in order to get a taxi home.

You could argue that the above rant could somehow be related to the fact that I’m working a late shift this New Years Eve, and you’d probably be right. I got the choice between that or Christmas day so there really wasn’t any option. I finish at 11pm so I’ll probably head over to Paul’s party to see in the New Year and make mental notes of my friend’s drunken antics for future blackmail opportunities. Kerry will probably be in bed asleep at that point, she’s not the biggest fan of the event either.

We had a pretty good Christmas. It was just the four of us in the morning, which was nice. Despite us making the decision that we weren’t going to go mad buying stuff for Amy and Evan this year we somehow managed to have accumulated several cubic meters of cheerfully wrapped packages which took a good couple of hours to demolish. Father Christmas came through with all the requests from Amy’s list, and even added in her very own digital camera which hopefully will prevent her from slinging our rather more expensive and fragile one around at every possible opportunity.

We then went to my Mums for more presents and Christmas dinner. My brother and sister were there along with a chap called John who is a friend of my sisters from university who is currently working in Romania for the Peace Corps but has come to visit her for the holidays. He seems like a really nice guy, he even has a blog.

Then back home in time to put Amy to bed then slump in front of a Battlestar Galactica DVD. Marvelous. Better than bloody New Years Eve anyway.

Amy woke up at 4am in the morning asking for a drink of milk.

“I need it to give me energy so I can go back to sleep”.

I’m having a little trouble getting in the Christmas spirit. I don’t know why but I haven’t had a single dream of white Christmas, my bells haven’t been jingling or even ring-ting-tingling, and the closest I’ve come to a walking through a winter wonderland was hurrying through the freezing rain in Huddersfield town centre.

Still, I’m not working now until boxing day so I should have plenty of time to work myself up into a festive frenzy. Even as I type I have “A Jolly Christmas with Frank Sinatra” playing on itunes in an attempt to summon the ghost of Christmas present.

Kerry and I have very different taste in Christmas music. She tends to favour the pop and rock end of the spectrum: Slade, the Pogues, the Pretenders, et al; while I am more of a traditionalist, preferring a good bit of Bing Crosby or even the odd Christmas Carol.

There is always an assimilation period when two people get married or move in together. Various negotiations take place to determine things like which compartment of the cutlery drawer the spoons go in, who’s towel is whose, or if you are allowed to leave the margarine tub open on the kitchen counter for days at a time (you are not apparently). After nearly seven years of living together Kerry and I have ironed most of these out, but at Christmas we still sometimes find ourselves raising our eyebrows at each other and saying things like “OK, that’s not how I used to do it in my family, but we could do it like that I suppose”.

This will be the first year that we will do the whole Santa thing with any conviction. Last Christmas Amy was too young to grasp the concept, but this time round she’s raring to go. It’s surprising how many things need to be decided about his visit. Will he put presents in a stocking or a pillowcase? Will this be left in Amy’s room or downstairs in the lounge? What percentage of the total gifts should be from him?

Both Kerry and I have slightly different cherished childhood memories and traditions which we are keen to pass down to our children. She used to get presents in a stocking in her bedroom, which invariably contained a Satsuma and a few small presents – the rest of her gifts awaited her under the Christmas tree. In my family we used to come downstairs to find entire pillowcases stuffed full of joyful delights waiting for us on the couch, the tree sheltered only our “big present” from Mum and Dad like a TV or bike.

Kerry and I do have some things in common however. We both carry the emotional scarring of our parents forcing us to wait until they had finished a sadistically leisurely breakfast before we could touch the gifts under the tree; a tradition we will no doubt torture Amy with - therefore continuing the circle of abuse. It’s good to see that despite our differences we can still come together at this time of peace and love in order to torment our children. After all, family is what Christmas is all about.