Got Them Back to Work Blues...

A tragic day in store tomorrow as, after almost a fortnight as a stay-at-home-dad, I will be abandoning Olivia and returning to work. Of course I'll understand if some of you are tuning up your invisible violins and scoffing something about me probably having another hoiday coming up in a couple of months anyway, but the sad fact remains that the blissful idyll of life as a family, without the impertinent intrusion of such depressing necessities as the obligation to earn money, is temporarily on hold.

Anyway, it's been almost two weeks since Hurricane Olivia blew into our lives, and though the levees have buckled once or twice (during a couple of very fraught, extended bouts of midnight howling) they show no signs of actually breaking, and so I thought that I would take this opportunity to survey the last two weeks and extract any nuggets of wisdom that could prove useful for those with parenthood impending. Think of it as the stuff they don't tell you at Parentcraft...

1) Practise your prestudding...You will scour the baby-rearing manuals in vain for advice on what I have come to realise is the essential skill when it comes to raising children; the swift buttoning of babygrows. I have lost count of the number of hours that must have been lost, and crying sessions prolonged, during the last fortnight as I fumbled with prestuds. I have known the despair of seeing last minute equalisers deprive you of glory, but it is as nothing next to the frustration of finding a rogue prestud just when you thought you had finally matched them all up at last.

My advice to you? Work on your manual dexterity and ensure that your fingers are as nimble as can be. Or get busy with the sewing box and pimp up your stash of babygrows, swapping those pesky prestuds for nice, easy to fasten velcro.

There endeth the first lesson - Olivia's asleep and we need to take advantage of the situation by watching something on the box. More indispensable wisdom to follow...