Recently I’ve been playing a game called Minecraft. If you’re unaware of the title, it’s a “sandbox game” that allows you to build fantastic (or mundane) creations out of simple blocks. It sounds basic, and at first glances looks basic, but it’s deceptively complex and engrossing. You can make whole cities in Minecraft’s procedurally-generated infinite worlds, and people have worked on shared servers to create huge ones. People using the basic logic gates and wiring available in Minecraft have actually built working computers within the game.

When I described this to someone they said “oh so basically computer Lego for grown-ups”.

I agreed, and then realised that actually it’s not just Lego for grown-ups, it’s Lego for kids too. It, or something similar, might even be the Lego for Tom’s generation. In the same way that I as a kid eschewed complex and fiddly bits of metal Meccano for fun and colourful plasic blocks, Tom might skip Lego and move directly to virtual blocks in a virtual world.

Tom will implore me to “play Minecraf!”, and then sit between my legs as we fly over oceans, forests and deserts looking for an open space to start building.

“Make a house!” he’ll direct me. “Blue house!”

So we start stacking up blue blocks in a square, laying the foundations for a house. Soon, with further directions from the small site foreman, we have a blue house complete with door, windows and a roof.

Once, to appease the Abney and Teal obsessed little boy, I made a giant Neep.

He’s hollow, with a bedroom inside, and a little hatch that closes when you pull a lever. I think that if it was at all possible Tom would live there.

Houses are important, especially when night arrives, because in the world of Minecraft that’s when the monsters come out.

In “sandbox” mode the monsters can be turned off altogether, and even when they’re present they wander around passively. In “survival” mode they’re vicious and deadly.

I spent my first “day” in Minecraft (before I let Tom watch) desperately digging out a cave before nightfall. I then spent the entire night with a zombie staring at me through the small airhole I’d left in the wall of the chamber. It was the first time I’ve been a frightened by a game for a long time.

So, naturally I hestitated before letting Tom see the monsters. But I came to realise that Tom is ready to be “a little bit scared” about things. The “MONTORS!” in Minecraft (as Tom calls them) are actually just a little bit scary. Daylight makes them go away, and they’re blocky and a bit silly. Montors aren’t real, and Tom gets that.

So we sleep in our giant Neep, ignoring the monsters outside, and the next morning we go and make something brand new.

Or blow things up with TNT, that’s fun too.

Last night he went to bed with no visions of sugarplums dancing in his head. In the morning he rushed into our bedroom as usual, without even spotting the stocking presents carefully placed by his bed.

Ok, he loved his brand new toy toolbox, and made the proper appreciative “wow!” noises when the new slide appeared in the garden, but it seemed as far as he was concerned this was just an exceptionally good Sunday morning, not a special morning.

Then, sitting at the dinner table, something seemed to click. He looked at the huge spread, the surrounding extended family all decked in paper hats, took a bite of a bacon-wrapped sausage and exclaimed to us all loudly “merry Christmas”!

I looked into his face, calm but tinged with worry. A lot to take in for a little boy.

I suddenly found myself feeling like I’d horribly betrayed him. My boy, with whom I’ve a bond the likes of which I didn’t realise was possible.

And now this mewling pink thing had come along and was ruining it. I could see him thinking it. Worse, in the back of my mind I was thinking it too.

Guilt for betraying my son, guilt for even thinking that for a moment about my daughter. A double whammy. Luckily Jane was on hand to spot and cure the wobbly lip. Okay, a bit more than a wobbly lip.

I’m reconciling it in my mind now. This was the day that Tom learned life doesn’t revolve around him. An important lesson, but one I’d wanted to put off as long as possible. I know that Tom won’t hold a grudge, and that I’m capable of loving two children just as much as one. Just it doesn’t quite feel possible, right now. I wonder if all second-time dads feel this way?

Six months ago we were told she was sharing the womb with a twin. This twin, tragically, didn’t have all the bits needed for life. It was a thing devoid of life, never having a chance. But Emily, unwittingly, was trying to help anyway. Her heart was supplying her twin with blood.

Her heart was doing the job of two, sapping her own life. There was every chance it would kill her.

Today, I know, I should be incredibly thankful.

Thankful to all the professional people who caught us and carried us to this point. Thankful to the amazing technologies that made it possible for Emily to survive and thrive. Thankful to an incredible wife who coped with not only with the emotional stresses of a difficult pregnancy but all the physical ones too.

How lucky am I?

This lucky…

This Friday, to be precise. We knew that this delivery was going to be a caesarian. Friday will be 37 weeks of gestation and the baby will effectively be “at term”, which means much less chance of problems at birth. The consultant felt it was a good time.

Which means we’re now just counting the days.

It feels rather weird. Firstly having a set date for something that more traditionally “happens when it happens”, and secondly because there’s no physical sign that the big moment is approaching. No clock counting down, no massive rocket being wheeled slowly across the tarmac, no opening the final doors on a Great Big Gestation Advent Calendar (I’d hate to think what the pictures would be).

Nothing. One Friday morning the baby won’t be here, and then at some point it will.

It’s all adding to my sense of detachment with the process. I know – I hope – that there’ll be the same moment that occurred when I looked into the eyes of Thomas for the first time and the bit of my primitive hindbrain kicked in and said LOOK I DON’T TALK TO YOU MUCH BUT THIS IS DEFINITELY A SMALL CHUNK OF US THAT HAS SOMEHOW POPPED OUT OF THAT LADY AND YOU HAVE TO MAKE SURE IT LIVES AND BASICALLY CARE FOR IT MORE THAN YOU CARE FOR YOURSELF AND WHILE I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION CAN I ASK WHY HAVEN’T WE KILLED ANY WOOLY MAMMOTHS RECENTLY? EH?!

That will probably happen again, and the detachment will be replaced by unequivocal attachment. There’s nothing like a tiny helpless being demanding your undivided attention to bring you crashing back into the here and now.

The here and soon. Gulp.

Goes and opens another door on the Great Big Gestation Advent Calendar. Ewww!

I definitely don’t feel that we’ve neglected his speech development in any way, Tom’s constantly being read to, talked to, and engaged with. Even so, I decided to try and be a little more pro-active about helping him along with speech. I bought a DVD recommended by speech therapists called “Sookie and Finn”. It’s a fairly simple set of cartoon stories following two small children, with lots of repetition of words. Tom’s really taken with it.

Today we watched the episode where Sookie and Finn go to the park. They meet a friend, decide to play with a ball, and then it rains and they sing “rain rain go away” until it stops and a rainbow comes out.

Afterwards, I talked to Tom about the story, trying to reinforce the language a little. I’d got to the bit about the ball, and Tom gave me a little look and said “rain rain”.

He smiled the smile he smiles when he knows he’s doing something a little bit new and clever. He was telling me what happened next in the story, communicating that he knew what we were discussing and remembered the next bit. That’s first time he’s ever done that.

It’s probably nothing really, but it felt a little special, and gave me one of my big “I have done a Dad Thing” happy feelings.

At first we weren’t particularly concerned. There was precedent; Tom’s uncle, my mother-in-law reliably informed us, didn’t speak early either (he doesn’t speak a huge amount now but he must have said enough at some point to get that job at IBM). But after a while the Overly Worried Parent genes kicked in and I started to surf the parenting websites to find out just what kind of milestones a toddler of two should be hitting with language.

The trouble is, like child development itself, the guidance is varied and hard to pin down. The milestones also seemed to be rather far apart: “by 18 months your child will probably be doing this and by 3 years they should be doing this,” yes but what about when he’s two??

We think he’s inside the boundaries of “normal”, but it was worrying enough that we decided to talk to our health visitor about it, and it’s something we’re going to discuss with her at Tom’s two-year MOT.

Since we brought it up with the health visitor, almost on cue Tom has started to make a few leaps with talking. He’s adding a lot more words to his spoken vocabulary. He didn’t seem to like to even try to say words that he couldn’t make the sounds for, but suddenly new consonants are coming, and with them new words. Tonight at bedtime he managed a “night night”, when before he’d stuck to his all-time favourite “bye bye”.

This morning we also heard the first ever sentence from his lips. Words actually joined together to impart new meaning!

I’d made a visit to the en-suite during the night and followed the unspoken “if it’s yellow let it mellow” rule to avoid disturbing sleepers.

At dawn, Tom rushed into the bedroom with his usual remarkable caffeine-free morning vitality, and headed straight into the apparent adventure playground that is the bathroom. A few seconds later I heard the flush go…

… followed by small voice announcing “bye bye wee wee!”

A orator in the making, I think you’ll agree.

So we rented them both out and used the money we were making to rent a place big enough for our new little family. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but over the months we realised we were effectively stuck: reliant on the money we were making on the renting and never able to afford to buy a family house for ourselves.

So early this year we grasped the nettle and put both our places back on the market. Incredibly, almost miraculously, both our properties sold within days of being available. It took a while for all the necessary legal stuff to happen, but a couple of weeks ago Jane’s sale went through and we were finally houseless.

This is a great weight off my mind: it means no sudden out-of-the-blue demands for us (as landlords) to fix expensive faults in 2 properties. Getting a bill for a £600 heater you’re never even going to use can take the shine off Christmas a little.

So we’re houseless, but not homeless. We’re still living in rented accommodation, trying to stop Tom from destroying the place. The builders seem to be throwing up the house we’re moving into in next to no time. Unfortunately their legal people aren’t as nippy, they still haven’t sent our solicitor a contract yet.

But all things being well we should be moved in by the end of August. Hopefully before the little bundle of joy turns up, but that’s all a bit up in the air at the moment.

It does mean we can start properly planning though. The other day we met with the sales agent for the house and chose things like carpets and kitchen designs, we’re finally going to get that dishwasher that Jane’s mum promised us as a wedding present!

Speaking of kitchen stuff, the Fairy Hobmother from Appliances Online visited me and promised a £25 Amazon voucher if I gave them a plug. So consider them shamelessly plugged!

And speaking of appliances, our little Washing Machine Inspector turned two yesterday, and Jane wrote a really nice blog post about him.

Possibly due to the spring drought (the worst in this region for 100 years, I hear) the dandelions seem to be having a bumper year.

The lawn is carpeted in fluff. Great clumps are accumulating in still corners. Tom finds it fascinating.

I made a little video, but it’s quite hard to capture how strange it looks.

Summer Blizzard from Simon on Vimeo.

UPDATE: I’ve been reliably informed it’s not dandelions but poplar trees that are generating all the fluff!