She's pretty regular generally, in fact. At four o' clock every morning for the last week or so, she's padded relentlessly through to our bedroom and nested on the pillows by my head. Which is where she then takes her nice regular shit, grunting softly into my ear before twisting round, thrusting her stinking nappy in my face and proudly saying "Daddy! Daddy! Poop!"
Official WHO guidelines state that parents who have to clean up poop in the middle of their normal sleep patterns cannot be more than 50% well overall.
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Pokemon is the flavour of the month with us right now. Mormor started this by letting F play Pokemon Go on her phone. I made it worse by finding Pokemon the Series: XY on Netflix. The hardback encyclopedia was probably not a good idea either.
It's not all bad, I tell myself as F and C squabble over the rights to V's phone, or as V comes back thirty minutes late from work because she found a new Pokemon up on top of Skansen Kronan at 2230 in the rain.
F colours in Pokemon, plays at being Pokemon, trains her soft toys in gym battles (Bunbun, who is an electric and water Rabbit-type Pokemon, I'm told, has just learnt Quick Attack) and is already ordering a Pokeball-shaped cake for her 5th birthday. I know more about the evolutionary trees and vulnerabilities of various regional specimens (specimon?) than can be entirely useful. Useful other than being my daughter's living Pokedex, I mean.
C is similarly intrigued. She can name a good twenty or thirty of the little monsters, from her favourite Dedenne to more obscure things like Starmie or Dugtrio. V laughs at me for knowing what these mean, although she's the one doing all their Pokemon Go legwork. You won't catch me trekking up hills in the dark for an Onyx. I'm a nerd and that's physical exercise, the traditional enemy of my people.
It feels like they're filling their brains up with a lot of confusing nonsense, sometimes. Dunno which parent they get that from. Yes, I can still remember the stats line for a 2nd Ed 40K Lascannon unaided, (Short range 20", Long 60", S9, -5 to armour saves, d6 damage), but that's neither here nor there. Perhaps this mental kibble could be better replaced by, I don't know, drilling economics or a working knowledge of Mandarin into them.
But then Pokemon the Series: XY is actually pretty well written, with its cheerful message of teamwork, caring for your friends and not giving up even when you lose. And F is reading her encyclopedia most days. "That says evolution," she told me accurately, looking through one of my acting lesson handouts the other day. Darwin would be proud, right before he used his Darwinite to become Mega-Darwin X.
Seeing F walk to dagis, hypnotised by mummy's phone screen to the extent that she occasionally walks into things is rather less encouraging. As is C's furious scream when you take the iPad away from her after a thirty minute stint. But then they go and dance together, or play dens on the sofa, or have an equally fierce tantrum over something entirely non-computer-game related, and I try to calm down and remind myself that my failings (computer game addiction, specifically) are not theirs. Not yet, anyway, and at least I know what to watch for.
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It's been almost two years since I changed jobs or re-educated myself in any way. Lazy! Time to get a new batch of applications sorted out.
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