A Thousand Words****

Memory Lane Part II

I was talking to a friend of mine about the blog the other day. He asked me where I got the profile pic from. Before I could answer he went on to say that it gave a really good impression of me as a doting father.

At this point, I want to name my friend. Only Hannah gets to use her real name on here [and that was an accident in an early post before I started giving everyone nicknames] so I am conferring upon him the title of; : The Huge Tumbler. It’s a mangled anagram of his real name. More or less. Well, less, but it makes me grin so it passes the selection criteria.

So, back to me as a doting father. I consider myself to be one but regular readers will know that this blog is not quite a fatherhood master class. I’ve been going for a self-deprecating tone and if that comes as a surprise then I’ve failed miserably. I think it’s more entertaining that way. My favourite TV programme at the moment is Total Wipeout. I enjoy when people successfully complete the course but I tune into it for the entertainment value of the failures. Who wants to read about SuperDad? “I’ve changed twelve nappies today, fed my twins a healthy organic diet and have started teaching them trigonometry”. No way that’s more entertaining than babies dropping irons on their heads or trying to run away.*

Fatherhood is a tough gig and sometimes you don’t want to hear more advice, or to hear how well someone else is doing. Sometimes it’s better to hear that other people are also finding it tough, that their kids act up too, that things go wrong and the world will keep turning. If that doesn’t work for you, you can just have a cheap laugh at my expense to help you through.

Despite what The Huge Tumbler might think of the picture, it’s self-deprecating too. I did see the potential for a good impression in it but mostly I liked it because I have my mouth closed, I’m not drooling and if I’m on my side I probably wasn’t snoring either. Considering that pictures of people sleeping that appear on the internet often involve eyebrows being shaved, genitalia being drawn on their foreheads with eyeliner or lots and lots of shaving foam, I’m happy with it.

The picture was taken on the first night that Hannah and the boys got home from hospital. We had arranged to stay in my mother-in-law's for the first while so we could take full advantage of any and all support on offer. My sister-in-law, The Wag, kindly gave up her room to accommodate us. The plan was that I would wake up when the boys were due their feed, change their nappies, help Hannah set up and generally help out. The reality was, Hannah couldn’t wake me, changed the boys herself, set herself up and fed the boys while I slumbered. Not model father behaviour!

The other reason that I like that picture is because I lived to see it. Hannah had a tough week. There was the whole childbirth thing for starters. Then she had trouble sleeping in the hospital. ** Then there was the fact that she was going to spend her birthday doing an impression of a milking machine after I had a trip to LA and Vegas for my birthday a few month s previously. Picture the scene; you have just lived through one of the toughest weeks of your life. It is 2am and you have been asleep for what seems like three minutes. You have been woken up by the harmonies of your children crying and your husband snoring. You have kicked and punched him until he stopped snoring but he is still refusing to wake up. You have so many hormones running around your body that you can’t tell up from down any more. On top of this, you can vaguely remember a story about a woman who got away with murder after claiming temporary insanity due to post natal depression. When I imagine the scene, Hannah is looking for either something sharp or something blunt and heavy but can only find her phone and settles for taking this picture and seeking vengeance at a later stage.***

*There was another escape attempt last night. Monkey Boy had been biding his time and lulling us into a false sense of security. We didn’t lock the front door and he kept his escape quiet by leaving it open behind him. Lucky for us, Fat Chops is a tell-tale and came into the kitchen to pull me towards the front door by my trouser leg, talking gibberish and gesturing towards the front door.

** There was one nurse in particular who caused the sleeplessness. She was smitten with the twins and insisted on helping with the night feeds and woke Hannah a few hours beforehand to make sure that she knew to ask for her. Then when the boys were due a feed she was nowhere to be found so Hannah asked a different nurse. Finally, at 3.30am as Hannah was just drifting off she came into the room, turned on the light and asked why she hadn’t been called. There is nothing like being woken up for a stupid reason to make sure that you are too angry to get back to sleep.

***I still don’t feel safe!

****I left the first note until last. The obvious reference is to the fact that a picture apparently paints a thousand words but I took a notion that it would be kind of cool to write the post so that it was exactly a thousand words long. It took me a couple of tangents and a little bit of padding to get there but in the end I made it and that makes me really, really, really, really, [quick count] really happy!