Esther is Best(a)

Last month I promised that Esther's blog would be produced in good time well in advance of the deadline and yet here I am on the 30th watching the seconds tick by. Bloody hell. I'm trying to offset this by including a distractingly large number of pictures for y'all to look at by way of compensation and to underscore how glorious Esther is as her second birthday looms.

She continues to be a rather happy child and is besotted with her older sister who is magnanimous dictator who only occasionally reduces Esther to tears via some odd effort at parenting. This sweetness has been tempered by the fact that she has learnt the word "now" which is turn what were previously relatively benign phrases, into something more commanding. So "Milk" which is sweet turns into the meglomaniacal |Milk, NOW". And it is attached to almost everything without prejudice. "Let's make America Great again, NOW" for example. As a corollary to this, she has also developed a rapacious sense of ownership that can make almost anything in the house belong to her (my phone, the house itself, the car, the table - anything that is to her advantage) and failure to comply with this relabeling of possession can result in the most God-awful tantrums, which is perhaps the influence of nursery and its proto-capitalist ways on her. However, now that she can now be left at nursery without being reduced to a puddle of tears and heart rending parental pleas, it's impact on her can all but be forgotten. No longer does one leave her there having your heart attacked by a ban-saw but insread you leave with a sense of tranquility that borders on smugness.

However, both of these things are overshadowed by an event so great it makes the fact the death clock has been moved closer midnight (don't watch the video - it's both amateur and terrifying all at the same time) an irrelevance. She has mastered, or damn well nearly mastered, the ability to go to sleep in her cot under a duvet. No longer are we imprisoned in her room watching cack on i-player (or worse Youtube) getting her to dose off. Now, we plunge her into the cot, hold her hand and away she goes - into the land of nod. Huzzah. She is now almost two thirds human - she can speak, sleep well and once she has left the land of nappydom her ascent will be complete. And the sooner those nappies go the better - their contents are not dissimilar to foul smelling Jackson Pollocks. Ouch.

Shoreditch Hipster

If ever they release an Album of Simon and Garfunkel covers, this is the album sleeve right here

Sleeping Beauty