I always used to wonder how families with children managed to get everyone up and dressed and breakfasted in time for school or work. It seemed like a phenomenally difficult task, and certainly not one I was capable of.
This morning, a Saturday, I gave Bernard his early morning feed shortly after six a.m.; as soon as he was finished, he sat up and started chirruping and trying to clamber over his recumbent, pretending-to-be-asleep father, so I hastened him away and we went downstairs to pass the time until the humans wake up.
I think I had a cup of lemon and ginger tea: zingy and necessary. Then we sat and read Noisy Noisy Knights for a bit. Oh boy am I fed up of that book. Noble knights have nice noble manners indeed. It’s Bernard’s current favourite, and we have developed a little thing that we do, whereby I sit on the floor, he brings me a book, and then he climbs on to my knee, turning round and round twelve times like a cat, before he sits down. He then lets me read two or three lines before he starts turning the pages rapidly, closing the book, and getting down to go and get another.
When I tired of that game, I went and made some muffins. Raspberry and pear. With practice, my muffins are improving; these ones were out of the oven just in time for breakfast. Applause, please.
Some weekends, I let Pete sleep in until 8, but as the muffins were there, waiting to be eaten, Bernard and I had to go and fetch him at the normal time of twenty-to. I open the stairgate and Bernard scrambles up the stairs like a small pyjama-d lizard, bursts into the bedroom, and only comes to a halt at the bed because he hasn’t learned to climb on to it yet. Only a matter of time. Instead, he cruises around to Pete’s side, picks up his glasses – by the arm – from the bedside table, and holds them out. He does this every morning, for whichever one of us is still in bed; it’s a small service that he provides in return for all the arse-wiping.
We had muffins for breakfast, and by ten o’clock we had bought a bike.
On books – when we can tear Tom away from the entire Miffy back catalogue and his Slinky Malinki/Hairy Maclary collection, he is absolutely besotted with Egg and Bird by Alex Higlett. Described as "an introduction to surrealism", I’d recommend it to anyone. If you flick through it in a children’s bookstore, you won’t get the full effect – this one simply has to be read out loud in parent-reading-to-young-child-voice. "Egg goes to school and does paintings of historic battles. Bird has a job at the city bank." Has me in stitches every time.