What to do if your giraffe breaks its leg

I’m not sure how it happened really.  I’m pretty sure I was only tangentially involved, if at all, but it seems like all of my children are growing up.  One day you are standing there with one newborn baby in your arms, thinking that surely things can’t be any better.  Then the next you look around to find that there are 3 of them, and the grown-ups are outnumbered.  The biggest change though, and the one that I thought about when we were having dinner earlier is that suddenly, almost out of the blue, there are three extra people in the house.

My Son's Very Bad, Quite Painful, Unsleepy Night

I was home late from work today.  This really doesn’t have anything to do with the story that I am going to tell but it’s always nice to have all the facts isn’t it?  Anyway, I was late home from work today, which meant that B got two of the children ready for bed by herself.  Which, actually, is probably only the 18^th most amazing thing that she has done today.  But before this turns into a paean to my incredible wife (can you tell she reads all these before I publish them?) let me get back to the story. 

A Drive to be Forgotten

That’s it, just come a little closer, I’m going to tell you something tonight, a chilling tale of a man’s complete inadequacy.  It will be a story to curdle your blood and have you sitting up at night wondering about how such a man has managed to survive for thirty something years.  

I need you to imagine yourself in a hospital labour ward.  Your wife has just suffered through a very painful, though quite speedy labour, and you have a newborn daughter in your arms.  You got it together enough to tell the midwife the name that you and your wife had literally just decided upon.  I mean it.  We had a number of names that we were pondering, I had vetoed some of my wife’s more outrageous suggestions (I don’t care how much you like 70’s soul and funk, we were never going to call our baby Earth, Wind & Fire, no matter how well it describes it’s early days, just imagine how terribly it would go with the registrar) but we had not managed to agree on a name until she popped out.