Harry's Blog

Being the father of twins imbues one with a certain amount of cockiness. After all - those early days together saw me as their sole carer having been cruelly widowed. And so when I hear couples talk about how hard it is to look after their one child I tend to inwardly snort with derision. “You want to try it with twins,” I think, “On your own, while your heart has been ripped out.”

But the truth is that no matter how well prepared you are, how much you think you’ve seen and done it all, the second time around is still difficult even for a couple. The twins didn’t walk properly until they were 15 months old. This was laziness on their part - they cruised for months - but thanks to our narrow house there was no gap that required them to let go of a wall to get anywhere. By the time they decided to give “look no hands” a go they were already experts at it. There was no phase of falling over, no wobbliness, all nice as simple.

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Okay Justin, we get it, you like to dress up as women. That's completely okay, you do what you like.

But you don't have to make a Cbeebies show about it surely?

I Left Pat on the naughty step for two long yesterday. So while he was sat there bored he decided to up the ante of naughtiness. Except it didn't go exactly as planned for him and soon he was crying his head of to us.

The stupid lad had put a little stone up his nose and it had stuck.

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An excellent article here in The Times on how people are now too scared of our police state and the ridiculously McCarthiest paedo witch-hunt to come to the aid of children who might require the help of an adult.

I'm sure that you're not surprised there's not been much blogging in the last week or so. We've been very busy with the newest addition to our family - little baby Will. Or Baby Woo asd Jo and I continue to call him following Will's big brother's lead.

Last week was tough for all manner of reasons. Firstly there was the obvious addition to our family of a baby. He's pretty easygoing as babies go - sleeping much of the time - but we've had major angst on how to feed him. After much wailing and gnashing of teeth we've settled on a pragmatic rather than dogmatic approach and everyone seems much happier, especially little Will.

Then there are issues of how two toddlers will cope with the little interloper entering their lives. Patrick has been a complete star. His behaviou over the last week has been something to behold, he's fascinated by baby will but also seems to have grown up to fulfil the role of big brother. He's hardly been on the naughty step since Will arrived.

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Patrick and Kitty have decided to put their sun hats on this morning, with their Bob the Builder helmets over the top.

Right now they are running around saying, "Two hats, Two hats."

Except it sounds exactly like they are saying "Twats, Twats."

o_O

Kitty tripped over a tent peg and hit her face on the decking in the garden yesterday. Cue lots of blood from a cut in her mouth and one hell of a bruise around one side of her face. It made me cry looking at her pretty little face so battered.

As expected the trip to the doctor was part medical visit, part interrogation.

How can a society with such completely shit social services - look at the baby-P case amongst many others - create a generation of scared parents worried about all the bruises toddlers inevitably pick up while leaping madly around?

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The twins love playing with their toy shopping trolley. You can often find one of them pushing it around, having filled it with a variety of multi-coloured plastic toys. Invariably they will announce they are going to the shops.

Kitty: Look dadda, shop.
Me: You're going to the shops sweetheart?
Kitty: Yes
Me: And what are you going to buy at the shops?
Kitty: BISCUITS

It's always biscuits, every single time they play shop and you ask them what they are going to buy or have bought - the answer is biscuits. We don't feed them on a diet of biscuits, honest, they may have one biscuit a day, often none. Yesterday my son was playing shop while Jo was out taking Kitty to see the doctor. Patrick was pushing the trolley around and I asked him what he was going to the shop for.

Patrick: Mummy's Tea and Daddy's tea

Bless him. Isn't that lovely. Not only has he broken the biscuit spell he's thought of us too.

Me: What are Mummy and Daddy having for tea then Pat?
Patrick: BISCUITS

Lovely.

Butter Wouldn't Melt, originally uploaded by Harry Neary.

Don't the twinnies look gorgeous? And so grown up too. They are in a totally adorable phase at the moment. Though that also brings many a moment of mischief.

Their speech is really coming on too. Sentences are getting longer week by week and their comprehension of what we tell them is improving rapidly too. It really is amazing watching your children grow up.

Neither can pronounce a hard C or the letter K yet though, once they manage that their speech is going to sound really impressive. Right now car is "char", but even that's adorable in its own way.

For the curious photophiles among you II shot this on black & white film. Yes actual film. Taken with a brilliant Canon EOS 5 SLR I bought for ?30 on Ebay, oh and a much more expensive Tamron 70-200mm f2.8 lens. The film? Ilford HP5 400.

Kitty and her Grandpa, originally uploaded by Harry Neary.

Our daughter is just over two years old but has clearly decided that she is a grown up. She points at other children, often ones a year or two older than her and declares, "Look Dad, a baby."

And that last quote brings up my main point for this post. For the last few weeks Kitty has been calling me Dad. I've got very used to being Daddy or Dadda especially as Kitty's voice¹ is so sweet and angelic.

Now I'm merely Dad. And while she's still the same tiny adorable flirt that ignores her mother's orders and attempts to wrap me around her little finger, something has changed.

Being called Dad makes me feel old in a way that Dadda or Daddy didn't. When I try to point this out to Kitty she just laughs at me like I'm an idiot.

_{¹At least her normal voice, not the one she uses for screeching "my toy" at her twin brother.}

After two rather nervous and exciting days we seem to have sailed into the wind's eye. Baby hasn't arrived and has stopped showing signs that he's about to. The midwife says that this is merely the calm before the storm and it's now a matter of days before we are parents of three children.

Following all the excitement of two days of contractions it does seem rather odd now for everything to have stopped asnd something like normal life returning. Now I know what it's like for the firemen of Trumpton when they race to a fire only to discover it's Chippy Minton's dinner burning.

Yes I am clearly tired. I'll go away now.

Granny and Grandpa bought Patrick and Kitty a sand pit. Foolishly Mummy and Daddy let the twinnies play with sand and water at the same time. And this is the result.

Come on dads you've seen plenty of Cbeebies.

So the question is...

...Nina or Sarah Jane?

While we're no fans of the continuum method and its mad fixation with toddlers learning to chop cucumber our twins have spent the afternoon playing with knives.

Wifey bought them some toy fruit and veg to go with their new play kitchen and the plastic food is quite interesting. It comes complete with a plastic knife. And the fruit itself splits down the middle and is only held together by Velcro.

Patrick took no time at all learning to chop the fruit and veg in half using the plastic knife. Our daughter on the other hand struggled quite a bit. Despite being able to feed herself and being very capable in many areas her skills with her hands to lag behind Pat.

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