Soft Play

It is exactly 4.21pm and I am able to sit down to write this post. The reason I am able to sit down to write this post is because my daughter is asleep! How is this possible I here you cry! What magical powers do you possess that makes your child sleep at 4.21pm? I know, I know, I’m amazing! I haven’t even doubled up on Calpol and Nurofen to knock her out either!

Ok, so I may have a little trick up my sleeve.

Two words Ladies and Gents…. SOFT PLAY!

I LOVE SOFT PLAY. There I said it!

Rewind 15 months and if someone had asked me if I wanted to go to soft play for a couple of hours I would have replied that removing my spleen and flambéing it lightly over my flaming testicles would have been preferable.

However this has now changed and my testicles can rest easy.

We first stumbled across the idea of visiting Playdays in Basingstoke one soggy Sunday a few weeks ago. We were bored and the little person was driving us both up the wall. If we had to listen to another rendition of Old McDonald Has a Farm one more time I feel we both might have reached for the Valium.

So off we trot to Playdays not quite knowing what to expect. I wasn’t even sure whether it was socially acceptable to bring a 15 month old to a soft play area! Surely she was too small right? Wrong! Turns out there were kids of all ages there.

 Also I wasn’t sure if there was any soft play etiquette. You know the kind of thing… do we remove shoes, is it acceptable to lick anything within range, Can grown ups play as well?! Turns out I needn’t have worried as my daughter couldn’t give two fucks about any form of etiquette. Give her a plastic ball pit ball and she will lick it (and then offer it as a gift to the nearest stranger).  

The first few minutes were spent cautiously testing the water. Both her and me. She started with playing with a couple of stray plastic balls whilst I made encouraging parenting noises and pretended to be the model father. All the while looking at how other dads behaved in the same setting. This farce lasted barely 10 minutes until she realised that every other kid was going mental and not being told off so why shouldn’t she?! I too realised that it was perfectly acceptable for the dads to play as well. This was confirmed when I saw one of the burlier fathers shouting weeee! As he whizzed down the biggest slide with his daughter! 

Furthermore, I discovered that my daughter is in fact fearless and will literally throw herself of anything. She was for the most part pretty good at toddling around the baby area and after a while felt she needed a tougher challenge. By tougher challenge I mean the big kid area. It’s fair to say that I was more enthusiastic abut this than Mrs McDadface. After much convincing/reassuring from me we ventured over to the exciting stuff. No babyish ball pits here! Oh no! We were in big slide territory now!

As we both sat at the top of the biggest slide I have ever seen, I began to rethink whether this was such a good idea. My daughter on the other hand had no such concerns. Before I knew it she had somehow wriggled free of my lap and had pushed her self from the top of the slide! Before I could process what was happening she was off!

Now I’ve learnt a valuable lesson ladies and gents. Do not dress your child in clothes made from Nylon. A fact that became apparent to me as my 15 month old bundle of joy hit mach 1! I’ve never seen anybody move quite so fast as she did on that slide. My heart was in my mouth as I shuffled down the slide after her (I was wearing jeans). Convinced I would find a blubbering mess at the bottom along with a furious mummy, I prepared myself for the worst. Instead what I found was the biggest smile I have ever seen along with much pointing and gesturing to the top of the slide. It seems we would be doing this again! I might just hold on a little tighter next time though!    

Poonami

It is currently 10.02pm on Sunday night. It is only now, a full 12 hours later, that I can bring myself to recount the horrific events of this morning.

It started as many Sunday mornings do since we had the little one. Woken at 3.30am nappy change, bottle, blah blah blah.

Somehow I’d managed to get the monster back to bed for a few hours extra kip and was finally awoken at a rather leisurely 9.30am by the sound of the dummy hitting the floor followed by cute gurgerly/screaming noises coming from her room. Time to get up.

Now in hindsight I should have approached the cot with slightly more caution. It did dawn on me just before I went to bed that I hadn’t changed any dirty nappies that day. I dismissed these worries with a casual “oh well, lucky me!”

This was a foolish foolish mistake.

On getting nearer the cot, I detected the faint whiff of crap. “Nothing to worry about”, I told myself. I’ve changed a thousand nappies and up to this point each one had gone pretty smoothly. I approached this one with the same confidence of a man who had yet to experience the true horror of what was about to happen.

I first noticed that all was not well when upon unbuttoning the baby grow there was some definite seepage. Perhaps seepage is the wrong word… more of a brown rim.

Now at this point you would have thought that the sensible thing to do would be to stop, restick the nappy and locate the baby wipes.

I did not do this.

A decision that I will regret FOREVER!

No, instead I ploughed on regardless. Don’t ask me why. All I can think is that the pure unfiltered stench of shit that was invading my nasal cavities had somehow impaired my ability to think clearly. I was now lost in a sticky brown fog of crap with a slight aroma of asparagus smelling piss for good measure.

I should point out that my little bundle of joy had also decided that today was going to be the day when lying cutely on the changing mat was not an option. Instead she had taken to wriggling uncontrollably and somehow arched her back to such an extent that there was a very real possibility of her hair becoming stuck to the trail of shit that had enveloped her back.

In the ensuing battle she managed to create a skid mark the entire length of the changing mat that obviously needed to be stepped in. This, she duly obliged.

So, I now have shit overflowing from the nappy, smeared up her back and over the changing mat and now it’s all over her feet, I still don’t have any bloody wet wipes!

It is at this point that I spot them on the counter. I move with the kind of speed Usain Bolt would have been proud of and manage to make it back to the changing mat before the little sod had the chance to roll off.

At last the tables are turning. I have the upper hand. I have the power of the wet wipe!

It took no fewer than 16 wet wipes dear reader, 16! It seemed never ending! As soon as one part of her arse was clean then she’d roll in another bit. She had become a revolving shit machine with arms.

It’s worth mentioning that we have our changing mat on our fluffy shag pile rug. It’s been like this ever since the day she rolled off the kitchen counter when I had my back turned. Again in hindsight a shag pile rug was a foolish place to have it. Remarkably though Not a single fleck of shit has made it onto that rug. A record, I am proud of to this day.

After a good 5 minutes of her rolling around squirming, screaming, trying to put her hands in it and me trying not to vomit into the shagpile, I finally managed to get her clean. New nappy on followed by the baby grow.

It is at this point that I realised the fallout from the nappy had not been contained. There had indeed been seepage.

Baby grow off.

This particular baby grow was the type that buttons from the back, thus making life that little bit more difficult. It had only been on about two hours as it was (She had decided to wipe up milk with her elbows during breakfast). Anyway a replacement for the replacement was needed.

After what seemed like hours, I changed the baby grow and  she was finally clean and shit free!

At this point I notice her gazing lovingly into my eyes the way only a daughter can.

However, my feelings of love for her changed when her gaze changed from “I love you daddy” to “I haven’t finished with you yet arsehole!”

“What more could she possibly have in mind?” I pondered desperately. 

Before I had time to contemplate this further She managed to spit her dummy into a high looping arch, from the changing mat, over the shag pile before it landed… Yes,you guessed it…. into the now steaming heap of shit that was her nappy.

  

                              

                                       The unfortunate dummy

I love you too darling.

Fathers day- Eating Out with the Monster!

"Go to a restaurant with a baby? Are you Fucking mad?!"

"You want to eat in public with your child?!"

"I'd rather eat my own bollocks than put myself through that!"

These are all things that I've heard people say when I mentioned that I was going to take the little one to a restaurant. Call me naïve or even deluded but I've always thought the little one should be taken out to eat as much as possible. I'm not talking 5 star dining by any means- fuck me, judging by the state of my bank balance, we're lucky if we can stretch to a deluxe meal deal at Maccy D's but eating out together once in a while should be something that we do as a family. The snobby part of me is also terrified that she won't know how to behave when she is able to start going to restaurants by herself.

So with this in mind I decided that for Father's Day I wanted to have breakfast out as a family.

The day did not start well.

It wasn't helped that the little one decided she'd had enough of sleeping through the night and instead thought it would be a good idea to wake me up at 3.30am. Not only this, but once the obligatory nappy change had been carried out she then thought an early father's day present would be to have a shit in the clean nappy. Obviously she decided this just as I had finished buttoning the final popper on the baby grow.

Anyway a few hours later we all get up and get ready to go out for some breakfast. Now, I was really craving some pancakes, so with that in mind we decided to head out to our local Frankie and Bennies.
We arrived around 10am and fortunately there was one table left.
After settling into our seats the waitress took our order and left us to it.

It was at this point that the gravity of our situation dawned on us. What were we thinking?!
What if she starts screaming?! What if she flings food across the restaurant?! What if she has a massive shit and stinks the place out?!

Alas we needn't have worried. For a good 5 minutes she was as good as gold. Cooing cutely, waving at passers by, smiling at the waitress. All was good.
Until that is, boredom set in.

Neither of us had considered the fact that sitting at a table when your 10 months old isn't that exciting.
We soon found ourselves taking it in turns at keeping her entertained. Anything from blowing raspberries to playing peepo! with other guests (whether they liked it or not!). Pretty sure we scared the shit out of one unsuspecting customer when they turned around to see a floating head smiling back at them. I should point out that they were sat on a slightly raised platform and we were below playing an extreme version of Peepo that involved flying through the air.

Finally after what seemed like an eternity (it was only 15 mins) our food arrived. Now back in our child free days we would have said thank you to the waitress and tucked in.
Not anymore.

We thought it would be good if little one got to try something other than pureed spag bol so we ordered her a mini waffle with strawberries and chocolate dip. This was a rookie error and it soon became clear that we weren't going to be eating anytime soon. Strawberries, apparently are an alien concept to my daughter, even though she's had them numerous times at home. The fact that they were thinly sliced, completely threw her off and caused her to make a face as if we were force feeding her slugs.
The chocolate dip faired better and went down a treat. It did mean however, that we then had to spend the next 10 mins feeding her tiny bits of waffle dipped in chocolate sauce. She apparently had lost all function in her hands and insisted on being fed like a baby chick.

Finally she seemed to be getting full and therefore sleepy! A quick transfer from highchair to buggy and voila! She was asleep!

This was our signal to eat. A short 10 minute gap that we knew wouldn't come around again anytime soon.

Ladies and gentleman, if you happened to be passing by Frankie and Bennies in Basingstoke at approximately 11am on Sunday morning, you would have witnessed something very special. Never before have 6 pancakes with Bacon and Eggs been inhaled quite as quickly as by 2 otherwise well mannered people. On behalf of Mrs Mcdadface and myself, I apologise.

Needless to say we downed our coffee and paid in record time.

So the moral from this little tale? Eating out is no longer a relaxing experience! I long for the day when we can give her some colouring in to do while we eat in peace.

Like that will ever happen!!

N.B Shout out to the staff at Little Frankie and Bennies Basingstoke- You were lovely! Thankyou!

Bath Time.

So, as promised in my last post, a little insight into our nightly bath time ritual.

It goes a little something like this.

The horror of what was feeding time has just about finished. Both child and parent are exhausted in equal measure. Just to give you an idea, I will use tonight as an example. This was the scene at approximately 6.45pm. My daughter is PINK.

Yes, you did read that right. Pink. Covered, head to toe in fromage frais. Well I think it was fromage frais. There was a slight crust to the upper layers around the eyebrows. This I can only assume was snot mixed with the fromage frais.
Just below the neck area there is a slimey brown liquid which I am hoping against hope is mushed banana. If not, then we have entered a whole new world of pain. The kind of pain that only an explosive nappy can bring.

Luckily on this occasion my poo fears are misplaced.

The next stage in the process is the extracting from the high chair and transferring to the bath. In theory this should be simple. In reality, it is not.

The reason that it is not is because she is currently covered in fromage frais, banana and snot. This therefore makes it difficult to remove the clothes. Once clothes are removed we then have the nightly game of nappy roulette. Has she managed to have a shit in the 30 minutes it took to have dinner?
The answer, dear reader is Yes. Yes she has.

So as things stand we are currently naked, covered in fromage frais, snot, banana and slightly smelling of shit. We are however edging closer to the bath tub.

With one final dash, holding baby at arms length (to avoid being pissed on) we make it to the bath.

This is definitely my favourite bit. She loves being in the bath! Splashing is compulsory and most of the water ends up on the kitchen floor. We tend to go through phases of which toy is favourite. We are currently very much into a fluorescent orange crab and a pink octopus. We've also taken to drinking the bath water (when its full of soap, naturally).

After 10 minutes or so we decide to call it a night and get her out. This has a whole routine to itself.
Let me explain...

You see she doesn't just like to get out of the bath like any normal child. No. There is a very strict routine which consists of two main parts.

Part 1
Stand in bath and do the naked dance. The naked dance does what it says on the tin. She likes to be propped up on 2 feet and "danced" in full view of the neighbours whilst mummy and daddy sing we are the cheeky girls, we are the cheeky girls, touch my bum, don't be shy, cheeky cheeky!
Regular readers of my blog will have noticed that the cheeky girls make an appearance during the drying off process as well.

Part 2
Once removed from bath and wrapped up in towel, it's time for the obligatory game of Peepo!
This is done in the remote hope that it will prevent screaming when on the changing mat.
It doesn't.

Cue second verse of We are the cheeky girls, whilst drying, smearing cream on nappy rash, battling the vest, getting both arms and legs into baby grow, buttoning up baby grow and then finally rebuttoning baby grow because you missed one of the poppers.

Little trick we've come up with to relax her is to play Twinkle Twinkle Little Star on repeat. This gives us just enough time to do all of the above!

Now finally dressed (and looking very cute!) She's ready for her final bottle of the day.

10 minutes later, the impossible appears to have happened.... She's asleep! 

Enjoy the peace and quiet!

Surviving the first year of dadding

So this time last year I was blogging about ways to keep Mrs Mcdadface entertained whilst preggers. Bingo was popular as well as multiple trips to Mothercare to kit out the nursery. We would often sit happily passing the hours having coffee and fantasising about how magical parenthood would be.

Since then I only go to bingo in my dreams! Now mini Mcdadface is here we have NO TIME TO DO ANYTHING EVER AGAIN!
Our lives have been changed FOREVER! Gone are the days when we could sleep until late morning and pop out for breakfast at Frankie and Bennies. God I love their pancakes! Oh no, now we're lucky if we sleep more than 4 hours. If you don't have kids and claim you're tired, I will openly mock you! You don't know how lucky you are! I often wonder what we actually did when we had entire weekends to ourselves.

To demonstrate my point further let me paint a little picture for you. I thought it might be fun to compare weekends before and after kids.

Weekend A: Before kids.
Saturday: Wake up around 9am, lay in bed until 11, shower, get dressed, have lunch/brunch around 3, go for a leisurely stroll around shops, park or other kid free related activity, get home, have a drink, perhaps meet friends for meal? Get home, have a cup of tea whilst watching a whole TV program! Go to bed and sleep soundly for 8 blissful hours!
Sunday: Much the same as Saturday.

Weekend B: With spawn.
Saturday: Wake up around 3am. Mini Mcdadface has decided to throw dummy out of cot and as a result is screaming. This has also alerted her to the fact that she has a nappy full of piss and is starving hungry. Walk downstairs, trip over a singing Mini mouse book and battle piss soaked nappy in the dark. Nappy changed- Phase 1 complete.
Phase 2- Prepare bottle, warm bottle and administer bottle. All of course in pitch darkness to avoid waking mini Mcdadface further.
30 mins later feeding complete, attempt to gently move from sofa to upright position without waking child. I can only compare this is to disarming a highly volatile bomb. One false move and you're screwed. Now slowly moving towards the stairs, avoiding the singing Minnie mouse book and gingerly begin ascending the stairs. It's important to note at this point that our staircase is the noisiest staircase known to mankind. Every fucking step creaks. If all goes to plan I am now at the summit and edging closer to the promised land of sleep. Place ticking time bomb... sorry I mean child into cot and retreat as quietly as possible. Return to bed.
Wake up again at 7am (if lucky). Enter Mini Mcdadface's room to be greeted by the biggest smile! 3am shenanigans instantly forgiven. Pick her up for a big cuddle only to be greeted with the overpowering aroma of shit.
Take child downstairs, change nappy, Change childs clothes. Make bottle, play with child for an hour, prepare solid food for child, feed/bathe child with porridge. By this time she's getting a bit cranky because she's been up for a whole 2 hours. Time for a nap. Only Child doesn't realise she needs a nap and battles harder than most war veterans before succumbing to sleep. Navigate the noisy staircase and place child back into cot. Have a shower!! Ironically this is around the same time as Weekend A.
Jump out of shower, throw on clothes and if really lucky have breakfast.
child wakes up.
Prepare child's lunch, feed child trying to avoid getting child's clean clothes dirty, play with child/put washing on.
Having got child's clean clothes dirty, change child
If time permits and if me, child and Mrs Mcdadface have managed to feed, wash and dress ourselves we can leave the house! (This is by no means guaranteed!) Leaving the house normally means going to the supermarket to buy more food for child.
Return from the supermarket, feed child, change nappy and bath child. Dry child off whilst singing we are the cheeky girls, we are the cheeky girls, touch my bum, don't be shy. Prepare bottle, administer bottle........ CHILD IS ASLEEP!!! Don't get too excited though, we still have the noisy stairs to navigate! If there are no unscheduled interruptions i.e diarrhoea, temperature, teething, wind etc then she should be in bed by 7.30 pm. This leaves us just enough time to eat and then do absolutely noting as we're too exhausted.
Sunday: Repeat Saturday

So there you have it. How things have changed! I will leave you with one last little anecdote.
Picture the scene... Mini Mcdadface has just eaten/painted her face with pasta bolognaise. Before long the familiar scent of shit begins to waft from the nappy. Time for a change.
All was going well, nothing out of the ordinary. Until that is I removed the nappy and took a double take. The shit was actually staring back at me! I mean actually staring back at me! With eyes and everything! Turns out my little bundle of joy had got rather hungry at the child minders and eaten 2 googly eyes!

On that note I will leave you to enjoy whichever weekend you have planned! Oh and before people get on their high horse and say I shouldn't complain about having kids.... I wouldn't change it for the world.

BINGO!!

As the weeks go by and the soon to be Mrs McDadface enters her 28th week (could be 27th. I've lost track to be fair.) of the magical time that is pregnancy (hoping you can hear the irony through the keyboard), she is rapidly finding most forms of movement difficult. She has got the pregnancy waddle down to a fine art! Still gorgeous though! 😍 Our Friday evening badminton matches are a distant memory.

With this in mind we decided to look for an alternative activity. One that doesn't require much movement and mainly involves sitting. We did consider going to the cinema, theatre, restaurants, cafes etc etc but there's only so many films you can see and so much coffee you can drink before the staff start to recognise you and give you that pitiful look that says "awww have you really got nothing better to do with your lives?"

And then it hit us. An epiphany. A bit like when Sir Issac Newton discovered gravity or when Einstein came up with his theory of relativity, we knew we had found the answer to all our hopes and dreams! Yes ladies and gentleman you've guessed it... 







BINGO!

Yep, we actually went to Bingo. I'm 35 FFS.

Whilst I jest and generally look down on people who go to Bingo (because lets be honest, its mainly full of old people and skanks), I have to admit that I was secretly looking forward to it! Even slightly nervous, as I approached the entrance to the theatre of dreams that is @GalaBingo 
However I needn't have been. We were greeted by a lovely (if not slightly smelly) chap on reception who explained all of the different versions of bingo available. Who knew there were so many different ways to play Bingo!? We decided to enter the "Main Event" and at £3 for 4 games, It was a fecking bargain!

And then it was time.

We were led like gladiators into the arena, as a deadly hush fell over the place. It was clear that we were the newbies. We were fooling no one. We quickly found ourselves a seat and sat down ready for our game to begin.
Well I shit you not ladies and gents, I have never felt pressure like it.
Instantly erased from my mind was the image of little old ladies with their purple rinses happily crossing off the numbers whilst having a cup of tea.
Oh no. This was different.
The sheer speed that the numbers were called out was terrifying! I had trouble keeping up for the first game. This must have been obvious as there were a few wry smiles as the locals clocked that we were struggling and a few expressions that said "welcome to the big time kid". We needed to get serious.
Time to get my game face on!
The second round was just as quick but now I had figured out that if I looked down instead of across I could locate my numbers quicker.
I was in the zone.
However, I still missed a few which may have cost me a line or two. We played the remaining games but weren't lucky enough to win.
There were however some serious winners. One woman scooped £300 and another £500. They didn't even celebrate, which told me that this was a regular occurrence. 
An then it dawned on me. The odds of winning are actually pretty good! Better than any casino or lottery. Why wouldn't you play Bingo? Apparently I'd misjudged how awesome this game actually is and when our time came to leave (with my complimentary dabber, no less!) I found myself asking when the next session was!


So will I be going again next week? Hell yeah!

A Week in the Life of the McDadface

So another week has come and gone as we near closer to D-Day. My better half is now at 27 weeks, and I think it's safe to say positively pissed off with the whole pregnancy thing. No matter how hard she tries she just can't get comfortable. Even the sofa has turned against her. Once she sits down it refuses to let her stand up again!

We also thought it might be an idea to invest in some maternity clothes. Now I'm not good at clothes shopping at the best of times and so this I knew was going to be problematic. Aside from the usual challenges: Getting lost in the middle of the bra section, tripping over stray toddlers etc my other half had to come to terms with the fact that she will now be wearing an awful lot of velour. Although we did draw the line at leopard print leggings.

In other matters, I received this video from a mate on Facebook.
My kinda dancing
This in turn inspired me to relive my youth and go OUT OUT to replicate some of these moves. Don't like to brag but...SMASHED IT! Hell yeah, didn't look at all ridiculous!
After several hours of this nonsense, I decided it was time to call it a night. When I got home at... wait for it... 12.30am! I decided that maybe my clubbing days are behind me. 35 is too old 😢.
A fact that was confirmed the following day when nursing the mother of all hangovers. This debacle happened on Friday night and I am now only fully recovered (current time 12.17pm Monday lunchtime).

On a more positive note, we've chosen a name for the new arrival! Not going to tell you yet as we want to keep it a surprise. I can, however say what it's not.

It won't be: Chanelle, Shardonnay, Chardonay or Chardonnay. I refuse to name my kid after a perfume or cheap bottle of wine
Its won't be: Princess, Tulula or Tia Maria. She's not a Disney character/Alcoholic drink.
It won't be Storm, Courtney or (this is my favourite) Nokia.
And finally Shaneequa, Taneequa and Evernescence have not been short listed.

Apologies if I've offended anyone! If you have any other ridiculous names that you've heard of, please comment below! Would love to hear them!  

And last of all, I can announce that I have a new found hatred for the banking sector! In case preparing for an impending baby wasn't stressful enough, we thought we would spice things up a bit and move house as well.
Anyway 5 weeks into the process and we still have no mortgage offer. 5 f*cking weeks! I could have actually raised the money blue peter style through hosting a continual round of bring and buy sales in the time its taking theses arseholes to decide if they want to lend me anything.
Anyway the waiting continues. I shall keep you updated!
I think that's just about it for now...oh apart from the wedding we're also trying to organise. But that's a whole new blog post!

Speak to you soon!