In January this year, I gave birth to my daughter after a quick labour of “just” two and a half hours. It was a normal delivery, and if this is what passes for “normal” then I believe womankind needs to have a serious chat with the Almighty.
But that’s a separate issue.
Daughter dearest, who we shall refer to as Pookie*, came into the world looking like a tiny, hairy Japanese man. I’m not being racist, that’s really what she looked like. Since then, she’s been photographed more than Prince George, videographed more than *insert celebrity name here* and has featured in more selfies than your average fifteen-year-old.
This basically means that now every time she sees a phone, she grins like she’s on a red carpet.
Being the intellectual snobs that we are, Rook and I have named her after our favourite social anthropologist / writer. It’s a nice, long four-syllable name which is going to make her hate us when she starts school. Or trying to pronounce her own name. I’d be more sympathetic if my name had been, oh, I don’t know, something short. We’ve also refused to put up her photos on Facebook because a) I’m superstitious like that and b) we need something to blackmail her into good behaviour when she becomes a teenager.
But till then, this is what happens when I come home from work every day.
* We didn’t set out to nick-name her after Garfield’s teddy bear. It’s just a happy coincidence. We had actually nick-named our unborn child ‘Mo’ after the little white robot who whizzes around in Wall-E saying “Mo”.