It’s December! This means it’s almost Christmas! The tree is up, the advent calendars have been started and Henry has turned the living room into a scene from ‘Elf’. Anyone who knows us will know that Christmas is our favourite time of year and we do sometimes get a bit carried away, but hey now we are parents that’s totally acceptable in my book. We took Polly to see Santa on Wednesday which was as fun and memorable as we expected it to be. Last year she was only 6 months old so wasn’t really aware of what was going on, although she did try and pull Santa’s beard off. This year she was definitely much more engaged so it felt like she was really getting something out of it and she gave the ‘elves’ and ‘Santa’s helpers’ a good giggle strutting around in her elf outfit squealing with delight. We took her to the local garden centre, don’t be fooled- this place is a huge collection of buildings where you can buy anything from a new dinner set to a pair of socks and as sad as it sounds is actually a great place to go for a little outing. They also have a legendary Christmas shop which is a great way for little people (and bigger people) to experience the magic of Christmas lights without freezing your nipples off stood behind 6 rows of people while the local ‘celebrity’ presses a button while posing for the local newspaper to try and get 5 more minutes of fame. We saw Santa at a funny time of the afternoon and didn’t expect a 40 minute Christmas extravaganza so decided to have a little tea in the restaurant there. This then provided another Christmas delight as the local brass band were playing much to Polly’s delight who clapped all the way through there performance.

We had another Saturday filled with Christmas when we decorated the house and watched Christmas films. The perfect Saturday in my book! The other big thing this weekend was realising that Polly had reached the huge milestone of 18 months old. That’s 1 and half years old. Where the devil has that time gone?! It seems strange that 18 months ago I would have just had some breakfast and was about to spend my first full day with her and now she’s running around the house stealing everyone’s advent chocolates and wearing a pair of my pants round her neck that she’s pulled off the clothes horse.  They said it would go quick, I just didn’t think they meant it would go that quick. Ok I need to stop thinking about it or I will cry, again.

It’s been a fun week of crazy pregnancy hormones that’s left me in tears at least once a day. The top reasons for me balling my eyes out this week:

•Prince Harry and Meghan got engaged. Just seeing them so in love and the realisation that she is actually living out a Disney movie had me balling at work.

•Polly’s face lit up during the big scene in ‘Elf’ where Santa flies over them as they are singing carols.

•My sister and her husband are going away for a couple of weeks, I realised as I was polishing cutlery that I was going to miss her so had to hide my tears in the kitchen at work.

•The BBC 1 Christmas advert with the Dad and daughter dancing at the end.

Yeah you get the idea that it’s not taking much to set me off at the moment! Well I’m gonna sign off now as the wild child is craving to leave the house and as the toddler group has been cancelled I’m about to wrestle her into a rain suit and wellies for a walk along the river. Now I’m just going to type another sentence to make it look like I’m still in full flow as Henry has just taken up the challenge instead which he’s more than welcome to. This could be a fun few minutes as he’s already uttered the words ‘oh dear what’s going on here’ and she doesn’t have any part of her body in the suit yet!