A contender for what?

Naturally, being a parent comes at many costs. One of these is losing any semblance of feeling that one has control over one's surroundings or one's schedule.

Also, fairly early in the proceedings, you figure out that you don't have any control over your child.

It was, then, therefore no real surprise to me to arrive home and find your mother in tears on the couch, holding a not screaming, but bruised baby.

Apparently, while in the bath, you launched yourself towards towards a rogue rubberduck on the outer reaches of the water and slightly misjudged your jump.

What we're saying here is that, at 1120am tomorrow morning, you're going to be greeting your grandmother with a halfway decent black eye that looks like we've been undertaking a systematic program of enrolling you in underground baby boxing competitions.

We haven't, I promise.

The chief point to make here, given the proclivity for overreaction amongst your relatives overseas and on our fair shores (not to mention the ones currently in transit between the two), is that you're fine. As with your previous adventure into self-injury, you were playing and laughing while both of your parents were still very much in a traumatised state.

We should also make abundantly clear here that it is not only your mother who has issues in the arena of baby wrangling. It was your father, punkin, not two days ago, who went left when you went right and succeeded in banging your head into the doorframe on his way into your bedroom.

It was also your father who, a scant few hours ago, found himself clinging to your left foot like a drowning man clutching a straw while you investigated the possibilities of bungee jumping from your parents' bed.

And babies in the bath? Slippery little buggers.

I've said it before, I'll say it again. You should have come standard with a handle.


Love you.