There has been a worrying development in Molly’s bedtime routine. Seven bells ring out and three stories, a kiss with a pat on the back, a tuck up in bed with her teddy, Baby Lelland and lights out in about twenty minutes is the smooth process we aim for. Sadly I can’t remember the last time bedtime was as slick as that.

Normal bedtime routine has all the same components as described above but is now interspersed with any, or occasionally all, of the following: a quick chase round the upstairs of the house, an impromptu game of hide and seek (she’s always under the duvet in the spare room), tears, the threat of the naughty step, reading more books, giving all the teddies a kiss, at least five stories and leaving the light on. And they continue after the official end of bedtime with a chase to the door, some mega crying, coming out of her room and running round the upstairs. She’s only ever come downstairs once and BW blasted her back up the stairs. She hasn’t done it since.

While we have learnt to sidestep most of them, molly has come up with a new tactical manoeuvre in the bedtime battle. Tonight, after the final story I tucked her up in bed gave her a kiss and hug, and found that Molly had not let go. She was hanging from my shoulders like a BA Baracus necklace, only heavier. At first I thought it was cute, until I realised she wasn’t letting go. I stood up and she was still clinging on for dear life. I prised the little limpet off and she broke for the door, but instead of running through it, she shut it from the inside, leaned on it and said: “No you’re not going yet, no, no, no.” It made me feel warm all over but ultimately I don’t like it. I picked her up, put her on her bed and left the room. The light was left on, and I’m sure I saw some wolves gathering in the back garden such was the volume and tone of the howl emanating from her room for the following 20 mins. Bedtime took 1 hr 5 mins tonight. A new record.

We are probably doing everything wrong bedtimewise, I’m sure we shouldn’t let her get away with all this stuff, but reading to her at night and Molly liking books is high on my list of things I want for her even if I feel like getting straight into bed at the end of it all.

Hopefully by the time you read this we will be warming our frozen hands in front of a warm fire in a fancy hotel in York. BW has a course on the wrong side of The Pennines so all three of us are all going for a credit crunch busting midweek break.

We will all be sleeping in the same room so we are taking the greatest single invention of recent times for young children, an inflatable bed. It sounds crazy, and looks a bit wrong too, like a two by four foot long li-lo, complete with blow up headboard and a scale model of those big sausage things that go in the gutters at the bowling alley on each side. The bed slides easily into our choice of a Night Garden cover. Once the washable cover is on and the bed is inflated, Molly, wearing her night garden pyjamas over an upsy daisy vest – do you see a pattern emerging - gets into it and pulls the built in duvet up to her soon to be toasty warm neck and hopefully drifts into the land of nod whilst listening to me read The Tiger Who Came To Tea. That’s the plan anyway.

They come in a handy carry case and roll up to about the size of a sleeping bag so are extremely portable. These clever inventor types, they think of everything don’t they? Except they forgot a child proof stopper. Molly is a master of bed deflation, whenever she wants some attention or doesn’t want to go to sleep despite it being nearly midnight there will be a few half hearted cry’s to tempt us into the room but when this is unsuccessful she will whip the stopper out, do some deep lunged crying and present us with her beautiful smile on our arrival saying that it “fell out”. A likely story. Especially as it has become a feature of our lengthy trips to see London Gran.

If you ever stay away from home with your children you could do a lot worse than investing in one of these things.

Hopefully by the time you read this we will be warming our frozen hands in front of a warm fire in a fancy hotel in York. BW has a course on the wrong side of The Pennines so all three of us are all going for a credit crunch busting midweek break.

We will all be sleeping in the same room so we are taking the greatest single invention of recent times for young children, an inflatable bed. It sounds crazy, and looks a bit wrong too, like a two by four foot long li-lo, complete with blow up headboard and a scale model of those big sausage things that go in the gutters at the bowling alley on each side. The bed slides easily into our choice of a Night Garden cover. Once the washable cover is on and the bed is inflated, Molly, wearing her night garden pyjamas over an upsy daisy vest – do you see a pattern emerging - gets into it and pulls the built in duvet up to her soon to be toasty warm neck and hopefully drifts into the land of nod whilst listening to me read The Tiger Who Came To Tea. That’s the plan anyway.

They come in a handy carry case and roll up to about the size of a sleeping bag so are extremely portable. These clever inventor types, they think of everything don’t they? Except they forgot a child proof stopper. Molly is a master of bed deflation, whenever she wants some attention or doesn’t want to go to sleep despite it being nearly midnight there will be a few half hearted cry’s to tempt us into the room but when this is unsuccessful she will whip the stopper out, do some deep lunged crying and present us with her beautiful smile on our arrival saying that it “fell out”. A likely story. Especially as it has become a feature of our lengthy trips to see London Gran.

If you ever stay away from home with your children you could do a lot worse than investing in one of these things.

It was Molly’s third birthday last week, to mark her entrance into the world we organised a morning at Rascals for her with a few of her friends.

Rascals seemed like the only option after her second birthday party descended into the sort of chaos and destruction that usually means it makes the ten o’clock news. Holding it away from home meant that all the stress of the day itself was taken away from us, and it was much easier to set and stick to a budget. She already loves Rascals so she was guaranteed to have a good time. All we really had to do was get there a little before the party began and have a good chat to the other parents whilst the little people ran around screaming, shouting and generally making merry in the way that only a three year knows. Molly celebrated the arrival of all her friends from nursery, some cousins and a couple of her favourite nursery nurses by falling into the container for all their shoes and bursting into tears. They were the only tears all morning and she had a fantastic time, as I think everyone did.

A whole industry has built itself up around kids birthday parties and it is easy to get sucked into the sort of one-upmanship that being a parent can often entail. Often people will feel that they have to raise the bar for their children’s party and that has the unfortunate knock on effect of other parents raising the bar yet further, and doing more than they actually want to in the hope that their children’s party will be unique and the best yet. We still have some way to go before anyone I know can match the $10000 lavished on one American 7 year old’s party.

All you really need for a kids party is a space large enough for everyone to have a good run around, the opportunity for the kids to get wasted on sugar and nice weather, if it’s outside. For us keeping the party simple is the new extravagance.

I am proud to announce something that every active father knows has been backed up by proper evidence: Children with a strong paternal influence are likely to have a higher IQ.

The university of Newcastle have analysed data that followed 11,000 children from birth in the 1950’s about how often children were read to, how often dad took part in outings with them and how much input he had into his child’s life in general. Mothers were also interviewed every five years for the scientists to better understand the children’s home life.

The boffins discovered that the cleverer children had more paternal input and were more likely to have better jobs. The boffins also found that the effect of being an active father lasted into the child’s thirties and that the children would be more socially mobile.

It also seems that it isn’t enough for parents just to live together happily because children brought up in a household where dads had been less involved didn’t do any better than youngsters who’d been brought up by single mothers. A father should be actively involved in a child's life to benefit their development, and for his own well being too.

Given that I have spent more time with Molly than anyone else on the planet and her mother tries to spend as much time as possible with her, she should miles ahead of her peers in terms of intelligence and communication. She is certainly better at communication than some of her friends and her bruised shins are testament to the fact that she needs to work on her coordination. Hopefully some of the good stuff is down to me, but more importantly if, as a family we can provide her with a stable, loving environment, she can flourish. It seems to be working too. She loves books and keeps talking excitedly about school. This morning I was reading Molly a story when we had the following conversation.

“What shape is that?”

“A rectangle”

“Correct”

Nothing strange there, a normal conversation for a toddler, except that I was the second person to speak.