Dummies, laughs and chocolate fudge cake

Erin and I went round to our best friends Simon and Sarah's last night with Simon's mum and dad.  We told them that Erin was pregnant a couple of weeks ago when the four of us went to France for the day.  We thought it would be weird if Erin wasn't having a glass of wine or sampling soft cheeses without any explanation and apart from saying she'd suddenly gone off the delicacies - which would be very suspicious - we couldn't think of any excuses for why Erin would not be eating them, in France, of all places.

Well, we'd told Si and Sarah,  but not Si's parents.  Si called us yesterday afternoon.  After we had sorted out that we were going to eat chocolate fudge cake for dessert, with strawberries, and raspberries, and cream,  if the local Sainsbury's hadn't sold out, the conversation paused and Si stuttered into a question. 

'Would it be all right if we told my parents about your special news?' 

'Yeah of course it would.' was my reply.

  

He then said, 'Great, I've already told them.' I burst out laughing.

After all the introductions, we got down to chit-chat and in a round about way, which I can't quite remember how, the pregnancy came up.  We were skirting around the issue and talking about Erin's family possibly coming over for Christmas as we would definitely not be going over there this year.  We were thinking everyone knew what we were talking about but there was a strange look from Si's mum, Susan.  We tried to carry on but she just kept staring at Simon.  His eyes gave himself away - he'd forgotten to tell his mum, that he'd told us, that he'd told them. 

After we told her officially and she gave Si a bit of  slap, which she later said she'd never done to him as a child and wouldn't condone, we fell about laughing which continued throughout most of the evening.

We tried to steer the conversation away from babytalk for as long as we could but just before the dessert came out, out of nowhere, Si's mum asked if we had any names for the child.  It had obviously been playing on her mind.  

At the moment we have our favourites which didn't seem to go down very well and everyone proceeded to give us theirs.

Daniel or Dan from Si - He thinks Dan Waller would make a good CNN News Anchor.

Christopher and Paul came from Simon's mum.  This made us focus a bit on Bible names.

Sarah shouted out the randoms such as Horace, Bridget and Foo Li Fah Fah - I think she might have had a few too many G and T's in the afternoon.

And Simon's dad tried to stay out of it as much as possible, and asked me if I supported Bolton Wanderers.

Stories of Simon and his brother, Richard, when they were kids, then followed and we later asked Simon's mum what would be the top three tips for parenthood.  And they were:

1.  Get them on a dummy as soon as possible - Simon didn't have one and didn't sleep, Richard did and slept until he was five apparently.

2.  Don't over stimulate them too young - they'll never sleep.

And Simon's dad then came up with the next.

3.  Don't let other parents' stories of their kids play on your minds too much.  They will develop when they develop.

We did talk about several other things throughout the rest of the night but that isn't what this blog is about.

At the end of the night as they were getting ready to go, Si's mum said 'Oh, there's one more tip. Love your children to death and you simply can't go wrong.'