It's one of the most annoying, infuriating things in the world. You get your kid a toy, she loves it, squeezes it constantly to make it play the tune she loves, until the battery runs out. She asks you to change the battery. Sure, you say, let's have a look.

But the toy DOESN'T LET YOU CHANGE THE BATTERIES.

It's sealed up, forever. No way to change the batteries. You just have to buy a new one. But they don't make that toy anymore, or it's changed slightly, and that's not what your kid wants. Your kid just wants new batteries in the toy. It's not an unreasonable request. But you can't do it. And now, when she squeezes the toy, it just stutters a part of the song, pathetically, ruined forever. Upsy Daisy had been silenced.

Not this time. I wasn't going to stand for it. It was time to carry out an operation.

When the kid first came along, I was really excited to take her out in the buggy. Naturally, I assumed that people who are normally rude on pavements would be more polite and respectful of buggy priority, and would make way for a baby.

Reader, I was wrong. I was so wrong.
​
People barged past me, bumped into the buggy, refused to move out of the way and just stared at me until I wrestled the buggy around them, cars whizzed past at crossings while I waited for ages to cross. It was almost WORSE than before, as if they resented having to be polite, and decided to be even more rude.
So what is the correct etiquette for buggies on the pavement, or "sidewalk" in American money?

This is a sponsored post in association with Pomegreat - a naturally sweetened fruit juice using Stevia.

I’ve been challenged to keep a “sugar diary”, to see how much sugar I eat in one day. I *thought* I ate pretty healthily (apart from my weakness for chocolate buttons) - but the results surprised me. Not because of the chocolate - because of something that is supposed to be completely healthy... Watch and find out what put my sugar intake over the limit!

​I swore I’d never do a post about soft play. Such an obvious, cliché of a post for a parenting blog. Easy target. But... There really should be a code. Rules. Etiquette. So I’m proposing some simple guidelines, that we can all follow. No pressure. But breaking any of these *will* result in the death penalty. Sorry. I don’t make the rules. Well, apart from these ones. To show just how relaxed I am about these, I’ll call them... The Ten Commandments of Soft Play. 

​Well, balls to that. I’m not the biggest fan of blokes (especially shouty gym blokes who insist on showing off by the weights, or changing room blokes who like to prop one leg up on a bench and dry their hair with all their bits dangling in your face, or idiot blokes who catcall women), but us dads get a bad rap.

The only decision bigger than choosing to have a baby is working out what to call them. You spend months thinking up baby names, going through books and websites to find the perfect combination. Finally, you settle on one that you love, one that probably didn’t even come from a book or website, something you both instinctively know is the *exact* name that fits. It’s perfect. She couldn’t possibly be called anything else.

And then, as soon as she is born, you call her by a nickname that just popped into your head.

We tried for 2 years to get pregnant, so we had plenty of time to prepare ourselves for the eventual arrival. We’re both quite anxious and overprepare for everything, so we read everything we could get our hands on. Baby books, birth books, magazines, articles on how to get pregnant, how to *be* pregnant, how to get your baby to sleep, how to wake it up again, feeding schedules, the best nappies, 101 baby products you absolutely must have, 400 baby products you absolutely must NOT have, things to watch out for, things to not watch out for... you get the idea.

I recently experienced my first Christmas as a dad, which was Gracie’s first ever Christmas on this planet. It was a huge milestone, one of those moments where you can feel your own personal family history forming around you all.

As you'd expect, it was emotional, joyful - and very, very, very, very, VERY noisy. I’m talking soft play at half term noisy. But without the risk of someone else’s kid doing a flying kick into your kidneys.