Defending the title at the terrible parent awards.

A while ago Rach and I won an entirely imaginary 'Dumbest Parents' award (see this rather old blog: http://experiment627.blogspot.com/2010/04/and-award-for-dumbest-parents-goes-to.html) for letting Katie get heatstroke while in Swansea. Recently we cocked up this parenthood thing again, although not as badly, and I'm not even sure Katie noticed all that much. It did make us feel terrible though. It was the Christmas party at Katie's nursery. In our defence, we hadn't been told and Rach only happened to overhear someone mention it in passing a few days before, so with three month old Emily starting to teethe, it wasn't really at the forefront of our minds.

On the day, Katie wasn't due at nursery until the afternoon, and Rach had mentioned the party to me the night before, about how Katie will need to go in one of her dresses. In the course of the morning rush we, of course, forgot, and although I remembered briefly at one point during the morning, I didn't call Rach to remind her. Later that afternoon, I hear from Rach what had happened.

They turned up at nursery, the party forgotten, with Katie wearing jogging bottoms and a slightly dirty top. Don't judge us on that until you have some idea of the sheer mountain of washing you get through with two young kids and two adults. Well, they walked in on the party and Katie looked around at the girls in their party dresses. She stopped, looked down at her own rather shabby appearance, then looked at Rach with a slightly confused face, and went off to play. There is no explaining the pit that opens up in the middle of your stomach when the realisation of what you've put your child through dawns on you. Even hearing it second hand from Rach, it was awful.

After nursery, Katie was in high spirits, excited about her gift from Santa and she told us she had a really lovely time at the party. She didn't mention the difference in appearance between her and the other kids, and neither did we. I suppose we got lucky. She certainly didn't hold it against us, seeing as today out of the blue she told me she thought I was wonderful (her own words, with no prompting). It seems we're still doing something right.