Taking the long way round

This started with a conversation I had with Claire as we drove back from a shopping trip with Oscar. He'd fallen asleep in the back of car towards the end of a difficult day and I said "seeing as he's asleep, let's take the long way home and see if we can get him to have a good long nap." I knew the traffic would be bad on one particular route, so that's the route I took.

And it got us thinking: how strange our priorities have become since Oscar arrived. Deliberately driving towards a traffic jam! Whatever next...

Well here's a list of other probably bizarre things I've found myself doing recently:

• rubbing my feet on a towel after taking my socks off last thing at night, so as not to make that "schlippp schlippp" noise that bare feet often make on floorboards, and wake Oscar up


• turning the bathroom light off *after* closing the door and *before* I leave the bathroom last thing at night, so as (you guessed it) not to wake Oscar up - this is particularly tricky as there's a wobbly step in and out


• being excited to see poo - especially if it's a new colour (Oscar has just started eating solids)


• singing nursery rhymes to myself while I'm working


• referring to everyone in the third person, even myself...

Nursery rhymes: we should be told

We were kindly given a set of nursery rhyme and song CDs recently. Our house now reverberates to them at around 7am daily as Oscar has his first kick-about of the day. Forget a bowl of cereal and the Today programme: now it's a bowl of soggy, half-finished cereal and "Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush".

And speaking of which: in my detailed study of said rhymes I've noticed some startling similarities. After a few plays, they all start to sound the same. But most alarmingly:

Aforementioned "Mulberry Bush" = "The Wheels On the Bus"

This isn't just my brain jumping to its own conclusions, it's a straight rip-off. Is there something going on here? I think we should be told.