Little Miss has become quite the disciplinarian. I am constantly being threatened with all kinds of extreme punishments for what I would consider to be minor infractions. Luckily for me I am used to walking around on egg shells in fear of my very being for making a misstep.

Others in the extended family circle however are not used to living under such intense scrutiny and the pressure is beginning to show. Here are some of the recent orders and penalties as pronounced by the toddler:

‘Poppy do that again and you are going straight home!’

‘I am going to use my magic wand to magic you back to your place and you will never be able to come back again’ - for a so far indeterminate infraction.

‘I am going to smack you on your bottom daddy - you are a silly duffle (I think she meant differ)’ - Apparently I am not as funky a dancer as I thought I was.

‘If you are naughty I will smack your head and break your bones and you will cry really big tears’ - fair warning I say.

I pass no comment as to where this adherence to doing things a certain ways come from, let alone the disciplinarian manner

Usurper has started to walk everywhere she can in her quest for ultimate freedom - soon to be followed by world domination. I must say it frightens me to think exactly what she will be like when she can get anywhere she wants to go. She is already determined to climb everything in sight, and soon she will be able too. The joy that follows the ability to climb everything is the desire to jump off every thing.

But that is in the future and instead of worrying about that now, I am too amused watching her wandering around the house. I don’t know about other babies, but Usurper in her current state looks like a combination of an Ewok and a puppet with the strings cut. This stagger walk with her arms above her head for balance cracks me up every time I watch it. So I’ll enjoy it while I can, because the future is going to be a dangerous place.

Of course for Usurper the present is also a dangerous place, because since she started walking Little Miss is in risk of loving her baby sister to death. I keep coming in and finding Little Miss dragging her little sister around because “She was trying to get on the table and I didn’t want her to fall and hurt herself!’. That and she keeps demanding that Usurper walk to her, or give her a hug, and when she doesn’t Little Miss takes matters into her own hand and drags her around or gives her a crushing hug.

Being a child of extremes if Little Miss is not trying to love her sister to death, she is beating her over the head (gently thus far) with a blunt object, because she is convinced that her little sister is trying to steal her Snuggsie, take her drink or commit some other crime against humanity. I guess it is better that I am worried about stealing each others drinks and soft toys, because I can see the day when they are stealing each others boyfriends and then the fun and games will be on for young and old………

I picked up Usurper this morning as she enjoyed her 5:30am whinge and I was again struck by just how much, when push comes to shove, I am a poor second best when compared to Wife.

You see I have taken to sleeping in another room of the house (don’t worry it is not the end of marital bliss in the house) due to the fact that I come to bed later than Wife and get up earlier than Wife and doing this tended to wake Usurper who is still sharing a room with us. And if Usurper awakes during the night then life is hell, not just for the night but the following 72 hours.

I also noticed that even if I do manage to slip into the room without awaking Usurper there is nothing surer than she will wake up several times during the night. I am convinced that my mere presence in the room leads to Usurper suffering grave unrest and not being able to sleep at all. Maybe I fart in my sleep or something.

But I digress - as usual - the point was that this morning Usurper let out a mini cry at 5:30am which was enough to wake me. So I wandered in and picked her up out of her cot (Wife is not good when woken so I tend to be the one to get up first while she gets herself situated). So there I am holding Usurper and she is beginning to calm down and doing that bobble headed half awake thing that 1 year olds do. Given the time it is also obvious that she will need a feed, and that is something that only Wife can do - so I have no choice than to bravely broach the subject with a still groggy wife (using the baby as a human shield for my own well being).

So she staggered to her feet, Wife not baby, and wandered off to grab a drink of water before settling in for an early morning feed. As for me I watched as Usurper’s eyes followed Wife out the door, and as they did her little face screwed up tighter and tighter and then she let lose with an almighty howl the moment Wife was out of view.

It wasn’t just a cry, but the howl to end all howl’s. One that came from deep within her soul, as if the most precious had just been torn from her grasp, and she kept howling until Wife returned.

On the other hand when I left the room a couple of minutes later there was barely a whimper. Pretty much sums it up really………..

A little while back Daddee Yah! tagged me with the following post: “So How Would You Change Your Lifestyle, People?” | Daddee Yah! and I thought now was as good a time as any to respond to the post - so here goes.

1. Get a lifestyle - I think that would be the first and foremost change I would like to make. Things just seem to be a bit to reactive at the moment, with work, life, bills etc. etc. What appears to be lacking is something approaching a cohesive ‘hobby’ or activity that we all do or all look forward to. I think that will change as the kids get a little older and then their interests will become the things our family does. That’s already started during the week with Little Miss and her activities and social life tending to lead the way.

2. Relax - it just isn’t that big a deal. I am a firm believer in that most thing will sort themselves out in the end and that there is no use working yourself into a frenzy over things that are either meaningless or you can’t control. Sadly I seem to be alone in this view of life amongst the family unit (and I will admit that I take this approach to an extreme at times.) But I really hope that the girls get over over their self-induced panics over such meaningless things as a tap is dripping.

3. Find your joy. That is the key to a happy life - find something you really enjoy doing and then do it. All the happy people I know are those that actually love their job because it is something they WANT to do. It seems not to matter if they are rich or poor, but they are happy just to do what ever it is they do. The second happiest group of people I know are those that have a ‘passion’ in their life that they just really enjoy. It doesn’t matter if it is sports, art, whatever, just something they are passionate about. I have never found it, and I think it leaves a gap in your life.

4. Learn or do something creative - anything, just something.

I think that is it really, just simple stuff. Relax, have fun, smile, express yourself and enjoy what you do. Then on the 7th day solve world hunger, fix the problems in the middle east and develop sustainable energy for all……..

With apologies to one independent, feisty little Hispanic chick I think we have all earned the right to dance around singing “We did it!, We did it, We did it!!! - Hooray!!!!!!!!!!!”

That’s right, the baby - Usurper - has made it to her first birthday, and to top it off she is fast changing from a baby into a fully fledged and highly dangerous toddler!

But now is not the time to panic about a future filled with catching a daredevil toddler as she tries to jump from the roof into a wading pool with 3 inches of water in it.

Nor is it a time to reflect on the last 12 months - because such reflection only leads to me sitting in a corner, head in hands rocking back in forth as I try and work out how we managed to get here relatively safely (you know the feeling, the same one you get when you roll your car 7 times down the freeway and totally destroy it, but you manage to walk away with nothing more than ruffled hair. You know you should be ecstatic, but you can’t shake the feeling that you really should be dead and that it has all gone horribly wrong somehow).

No today is a day for neither looking forward, now looking back, today is a day for simply gazing into the eyes of those you love and knowing that for that split second everything has been worth it and life simply doesn’t get any better than it does at that point………………………

…………… and then the crying starts again and reality sets it in and you drag your sorry ass over to the cot, pick up you child, and through bleary eyes and a headache caused by a lack of sleep only one thought keeps running through you mind “I am so tired I want to die, I just want 10 minutes to myself, why won’t you please just stop crying? Even when in this sleep deprived stupor I have never felt more alive than I do when I am rocking you in my arms, you have made me a better man just by being here, I love you, thank you for letting me be your father …………………. now shut the f*ck up’