Happy Christmas everyone! I hope you all managed to have an amazing day, Santa brought you something good and you made some new memories, even if there were limits to what you could do. Here in the Low household we had a merry little Christmas as instructed with just Grandpa joining in the festivities. It didn’t stop me making an unnecessarily large batch of bread sauce as usual – I just don’t understand why I wait until Christmas every year to make it. It’s like a perfectly made porridge!
There has been so much happening this week, I don’t even know where to start. The kids finished at school and nursery, E won in her school raffle and brought home a bottle of prosecco (never been prouder of her school achievements), the wife and I finished work for nearly 2 weeks and I’ve still been running every day including a 10k on Boxing Day “just for fun”. I mean, what have I become?
I’ve tried to whittle things down to a top 5…
1. At the start of the week I discovered a new picture stuck on the fridge. Now my kitchen is full of what I call “child art”. You know the type of thing – it’s pretty awful but you can’t bear to get rid of it, until at some point you run out of room and then either it gets shoved in the attic or snuck into the recycling. But to my surprise this one was actually recognisable as a nativity scene, and E’s drawing skills have clearly improved. As I was admiring the detail it definitely didn’t enter my mind that my identification of the number of shepherds present would cause a dispute which would run all week. I ask you now – how many shepherds visited Jesus in the stable? I’m not going to bore you with the various arguments, contact of family members and google searches which have taken place but all you need to know is that I was right! 
2. What to say about my son? He hasn’t really had a clue what is going on this week other than he’s received a lot of new toys and games and has been high as a kite. He just doesn’t stop all day, every day, and is determined to do as many things as possible to get into trouble. But he has really come into his own at bedtime. If we switch off his light he just switches it back on and reads all of his books and completes dozens of jigsaws until he falls asleep on top of them. His latest trick is building a den at the gate on his door so when we go to bed we find him fast asleep in that position and I have to adopt my ninja routine to get him into bed without waking him up. Every night the den seems more and more elaborate so I think he’s just testing me! 
3. E took Grandpa out on Boxing Day for a bit of fresh air and insisted they visit the local fairy garden. Like most of us he was a tad concerned about the Barbie dolls nailed to a wooden post but they seemed to enjoy spending some quality time together, just the two of them. As ever with my daughter it was the conversation which really made the walk as we were told upon their return. It turns out she started a lengthy discussion about how only having 2 arms and hands really wasn’t enough and she wished she could grow some extras. She started with her opinion that 8 would be the perfect number but after carrying out what can only be described as a SWOT analysis, they agreed between themselves that a 3rd arm would actually be enough and would make a real difference in day to day activities. She’d even worked out that the perfect place for it to grow out of would be her belly button. I do wonder where she gets her imagination from! 
4. Now I found out afterwards that before they had even left for their walk together, my precious daughter was causing Steph some concern. This was the conversation as relayed to me!
S: E would you like to go for a walk with Grandpa?
E: Yes please, can I show him the fairy garden?
S: Of course, but you need to change into some trousers instead of your tights.
E: Ok Mummy but do I need to take the tissue paper out of my bum?
S: Eh? What are you talking about? Have you not cleaned your bum properly?
E: No Mummy, I have tissues down my bum, do you want to see it?
S: No! Is it in your pants? Go to the toilet now and sort it out. That’s disgusting.
E: But Mummy you can see it, see you can see it through my tights. It’s not in my pants. It’s there in case I need to blow my nose as I have no pockets..
As she sticks her bum in my wife’s face to show her. She then proceeds to take it out of her tights and put it into the bin. My comment to Steph that it seemed a pretty innovative storage solution given the lack of pockets in her tights surprisingly did not meet with approval! 
5. I reluctantly agreed to go to the shops today to pick up some essential food. A big mistake! Apparently the returning of unwanted Christmas gifts remains high on everyone’s list of priorities regardless of the year! Oh and I also made the fatal mistake of taking my daughter. So sure enough we ended up in the toilet. I tried to convince her that it wouldn’t take long for us to get home but “Daddy, it’s coming now. It’s really coming down my leg.” was enough to get me in there. We managed to get into the family room with a single cubicle and suddenly I found myself standing guard, wearing my Spider-Man face mask with my feet under the cubicle door as she wanted to see that I hadn’t abandoned her. The next thing I know she appears with her tights and pants around her ankles asking if I’ll wipe her bum (“NO!”) and then I had to hold down the push tap to keep the water running for her to wash her hands. Then there was no soap. Disaster! “We should have brought the hand appetiser Daddy!” And then to top it off she insisted that I cover both her ears whilst she dried her hands as the blower was too noisy. Obviously that was the moment another parent walked in to find me essentially holding my 5 year old in a headlock whilst shouting loudly to try to explain the difference between appetiser and sanitiser over the noise of the hand dryer. I’ve never left Sainsbury’s quite so quickly! 
LawyerLow Diaries 