Does your other half, the love your life, your soulmate, the person to whom you have committed yourself for the rest of your life.... do strange things?

Mine does.

When you become a parent, you basically abandon any pretext of gravitas don't you?

Well, at least that's what's happened to me.  I thought I'd share some of my odder moments with you from the last couple of months.

Our three year old arrived in the kitchen one afternoon wearing her fairy costume.  White, with lots of chiffon and a now rather droopy wand and wonky wings it's one of her favourites.

"Daddy," she announced loudly, "I want to be a fairy"

"Careful what you wish for darling, that's how Daddy started!"  Oh how I chortled at my own little grown up joke there.

Consistency.

Challenging though it is, sometimes you just have to hold out. And keep holding out. And keep...well, you get the message.

Grandad isn't great with the phone.  Largely because he's so deaf he can hardly hear anyone on it.  But also because he doesn't really like talking on it.  

In fact, he doesn't really like talking to anyone at all, other than us.  Well.  Other than me actually.  

We have always been careful with our language around the children.  It's common sense to do so.  It's also inevitable, however, that occasionally the odd naughty word slips out from one of us.

OK, well from me.

We did have the morning, quite early on when J arrived in the kitchen to find our then 2 year old daughter had pulled a chair over to the kitchen counter, placed a slice of bread in the toaster and was watching it intently.

"What are you doing?" A slightly panicked J asked.

"Making toast!" Our daughter replied, in the tone and with the look of someone who had just been asked the most obvious question on the planet.

This morning the children discovered one of those gifts, a toy pump action shotgun.  Stuffed at the back of a cupboard I had completely forgotten about it.  

It was in fact our three year old daughter who found it during an impromptu game of Hide and Seek, at 6.30am.  (Yes, our children do play Hide and Seek at that time of the morning, which would explain the enormous bags under my eyes!)

In the dairy section I am suckered into buying cheese string (not on the list), mint chocolate desserts (not on the list) and a new type of yoghurt because it has a nice picture of a cow on it (again, you guessed it, not on the list).

Whenever in these situations there always appears to be a little old lady on hand to view the scene with a look of benign disapproval.  "She has you wrapped around her little finger!" this particular elderly voyeur noted before moving off with her shopping trolley.

I think, for me, one of the most daunting challenges I have faced in caring for our children has been the wall of femininity you meet anywhere you go with your kids.

All went well, until we reached the bread section.  In order to reach the particular loaf of bread required by Grandad I let go of the trolley for the first time and consequently took my eye away from our three year old.

I turned back to find her gone.

Looking across the aisle, I saw her settling herself on the back of a high sided stock trolley.  

I have man flu:

"Please help me, I am dying."

J has little sympathy: "You're alright, you're not systemically unwell"

He's not taking this seriously, I need to get across really how poorly I am: "No, really, I am dying, look, I can't see... where are you?  I'm blind! Agh!"

"You're being melodramatic! As usual! Take a paracetemol."  J even says that with much eye rolling.