Home tomorrow

I've been bored while you've been gone so I did some press ups.

We've just had an incident. Perhaps I should have guessed something was remiss. We ran a bath for Luca after his tea tonight, and as he climbed in he turned to me and said "You go away just now, yeah?"

Thinking he simply wanted to play with his bath toys uninterrupted for a few minutes I allowed him his space and retired to the bedroom. Suddenly the call rang out "Daddy, come quick, waters dirty!"

He'd had a poo in the bath. Multiple brown droplets, similar in appearance to chocolate raisins but with a slightly less stable consistency. With several agonising yet dexterous movements I swept my hand through the water to collect each one. I've rarely had such fun.

Hi Kelly, how you doing? Don't know why I thought of you right now.

I wasn't as appalled at this incident as I normally might however. This was actually the second poo situation I've encountered today. I arrived home from work early this afternoon to take the dogs on a long walk, and on returning brought them into the house while I boiled the kettle. Suddenly I heard it. Pppffffpppffff.

Isis - who'd emptied her bowels only 15 minutes earlier beside a tree - proceeded to deluge a tsunami worth of diarrhoea across the hallway floor. I stood frozen in shock as she stared back at me, never wavering her stare until she emptied out the very last drop.

Dumbfounded? Exasperated? I don't think the Oxford English Dictionary contains the word to adequately describe how I felt at that moment.

I enjoyed the cleanup. I was the highlight of my week thus far.

Luca had a difficult night again last night. Routine was met through to bedtime, and he fell asleep shortly after his bedroom light went out. However, he awoke at 11pm after a nightmare, not crying but screaming. I settled him down, but over the next couple of hours he awoke frequently with unstoppable tears. Eventually - probably around 2am, I'm unsure - I brought him through to sleep with me. At this point he snuggled in and slept soundly till dawn.

There's no question. He's fully aware of his Mum's absence and although generally very happy and well behaved is disjointed by the change, hence the "firsts" we've encountered.

**Useless fact of the day - Parents of toddlers are encouraged by child psychologists to act like idiots. "Even the most defiant toddler will take pity on us if we seem like total incompetents," says Harvey Karp, M.D., author of the DVD and book "The Happiest Toddler on the Block." The trick is to convince your child that you should be helped, not resisted. I think I could master this "technique" (indeed likely already have)....**