The good news was that the live, healthy baby is still just that: alive and healthy. It has all the parts and was practically performing somersaults during the scan.

The not-so-good news is that the acardiac (meaning it has no heart) twin is developing a large-ish swelling of fluid around its body. This was a concern for the consultant, and he got in contact with the specialist consultant in London we saw a couple of weeks ago. We’re now going back down again next week to be checked out, and the chances are he’ll decide at this point to intervene.

This intervention will probably be an operation to use radio frequency ablation to destroy the blood vessels that are feeding the acardiac twin. This will mean the healthy twin (which in these cases is rather unflatteringly called the “pump twin”) will no longer be having to pump it’s heart for two, and has a lot better chance of doing well.

The operation is not without risks, and there is increased chance of a miscarriage, but on the whole we’re positive about it. It means we’ll probably no longer be waiting for the pump twin to start suffering before any action is taken.

I know “suffering” is a vague word in this sense. The pump twin wouldn’t even know if it was suffering. You still want to prevent it, the instinct to protect and shield your child is so strong. But, I must admit, up until today I was unable to think of the pump twin as a child, let alone my own.

Up until today. After the consultant had finished his scans we asked if we could have a picture. He smiled and flicked a switch on the scanner, and suddenly the flat monochrome scan leapt into 3D. Instead of the ultrasound’s slice-through images of tiny bones and organs we were seeing a tiny hand, a tiny face, a tiny child. My tiny child.

Now it’s real. And it hurts more, thinking about how helpless I am to protect that little body. But one day, nature and medical science willing, I’ll hold that tiny hand in mine.

Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to have turned out like that. Soon you realise that, short of high-powered drugs, the only way to get five minutes of peace for pity’s sake is to turn on the telly.

Cbeebies of course, not any of the low-class kid’s telly. We’re not monsters.

And we always try to sit and watch with him, so it’s not just acting as an inert rectangular babysitter. But it does mean that after your hundredth or so sing-along to “Goodbye Sun, Hello Moon” you start to form some pretty intense opinions about the BBC’s tot-telly output.

So starting here are my potted reviews of some of the best, and worst, of Cbeebies.

Numberjacks

Dross, utter dross. I think Numberjacks was some kind of schools programme that was rejected for awfulness, and got shunted onto Cbeebies as filler. The “concept” is that a bunch of sentient numbers live inside a sofa for no adequately explained reason, and solve vaguely maths-related crimes.

Every episode follows this exact same pattern: something weird happens. The numberjacks send out one of their crew (chosen arbitrarily, as they seem to have no distinguishing personalities whatsoever) to investigate. The chosen number works out what’s happening. One of them gets inside a magical machine called, I think, “Brain Gain” and commands the weird thing that’s happening to stop happening. The end.

Every bloody episode. Rubbish.

Grandpa in my Pocket

Jason Mason is a horribly middle-class child from a horribly middle-class family. He has floppy hair and a face that’s going to start letting him down at about 17. His grandpa is an ageing Likely Lad who has for no adequately explained reason a cap that makes him small.

Now, you’d think that a man with this ability would use it for the greater good. Solving crimes or entertaining children or something. No, in every episode Grandpa uses the shrinking cap for the good of one person only: Grandpa.

Each episode something happens that vaguely threatens Grandpa’s cushy number lounging around being waited on hand-and-foot by his horribly middle-class family. He then, despite the protestations of Jason, proceeds to use his shrinking cap to restore the status quo.

By pretending to be a talking doll, causing his hapless victim to run away screaming. Every bloody episode. Rubbish.

In The Night Garden

The people involved in this programme should be rounded up and shot.

Oh yeah, er, the good stuff… um… basically anything with Justin Fletcher in it. Seriously, the man straddles toddler entertainment like colossus.

But in the big journey of life I’ve felt like I’ve been kept in a holding pattern. This is mainly due to the situation we found ourselves in of letting out two properties and renting ourselves. Jane and I both own 1-bedroom places which we were unable to sell due to the bottom falling out of the market three years ago, so we ended up renting out so that we could afford to rent a place big enough to take the three of us.

We thought, perhaps naively, that eventually we’d save a bit of money and eventually be able to afford to stop letting out our properties and sell them. But the trouble with juggling 3 properties is that there’s always something going wrong with at least one of them. We were exposed to expenses from all directions.

So, at the start of the year, I realised that enough was enough. The only way we were ever going to have our own house was to grasp the nettle and put our houses back on the market again. This meant risking losing both tenants and losing the income that was paying our own rent. But we decided it was now or never. If the worst came to the worst, we’d end up having to live in one of the properties we owned, squeezing a 3-person family into a one-bedroom flat.

The last time I put my house on the market I got no interest whatsoever. Hardly anyone even viewed it. I wasn’t expecting much more now.

Within a week of me putting my house on the market, amazingly, we’d found a buyer. We’re not at the stage of exchanging contracts yet, but things are really looking good.

Today we put in an offer on a brand new house being built in an ideal spot for us, and it was accepted within the afternoon.

Things are really starting to move quickly. It makes me wonder why everything seemed so hard before. It also makes me wonder if everything is too good to be true. I’ve not stopped worrying just yet.

But, really, things need to move a bit quickly, because in September this person turns up…

That scan was from Tuesday. The house offer was on Monday and we paid our deposit today… so yeah, busy week!

We took him to see his grandmother today. While I was carrying him into her kitchen, he looked over my shoulder and waved his head from side to side, going “ttich, ttitch”.

I followed his line of sight and found he was looking at a clock on the kitchen wall. He’s always been fascinated by clocks, particularly the one in his other grandma’s front room. She always holds him up to it to let him see it chime, and makes a “tick tock” sound while waving her head from side to side. Sometimes Tom vaguely mimicked this, but I always assumed he was just copying his grandma. But, amazingly (to me) that’s now embedded in his little synapses: when you see a clock you wobble your head and go “tick tock”.

What’s even more amazing (to me) is that the clock in one grandma’s front room is nothing like the one in his other grandma’s kitchen. The kitchen one is shaped like a fat bird, with large out-of-shape numbers and spindly legs. The other one is an austere wall clock with a plain white face and roman numerals. In the family tree of clockness, they’re occupying opposite corners, and don’t really talk much other than at weddings and funerals.

In Toms head though, they’ve been successfully grouped and classified as “things you go ‘tick tock’ at”.

As if to prove the point today, Tom also added Mah-mahs to his repertoire of classified objects. Mah-mahs are the big birds you get in ponds and feed bread too. They’re called Mah-mahs because that’s the sound they make. You might think they go “quack quack”, but if you listen as Tom has, you’ll realise they really go “mah mah”.

We took him to a duck pond today, and Tom started mimicking the sound they made as the ducks rushed to see us. It was difficult to tell if he was just making the sound because he was hearing it. So, when we got him home I showed him some pictures of ducks, and sure enough, they were Mah-mahs.

And the pictures of clocks were “tick tocks”, together with the essential wobbly head.

This probably sounds like an over-enthusiastic dad marvelling at some tiny thing that every single baby does. In a way, I suppose it is. This isn’t Tom even speaking really, in that he’s not repeating “proper” words or sentences.

But he is moving towards speech, inside his bonce are now cells that can abstractly link “a thing that looks like a clock” with a combination of noise and action.

I am an over-enthusiastic dad marvelling at each new little thing. But if that’s not marvellous, then I don’t know what is.

Firstly, I’m not big on football. I don’t hate it, it’s just not an important thing in my life.

Like many kids, I got my lifelong indifference to football from my Dad. He didn’t buy me my first football the day after I could walk, and we spent many a happy hour not kicking a ball around the park. I fondly remember the first time he didn’t take me to see my first match, anxiously not clutching his hand as I didn’t look down in rapt wonder from the stands.

Also, I’m not that keen on beer. I don’t mind it, but I’d rather have a vodka and coke, thanks. Or a glass of wine. If I do have a beer it’s something not too hoppy and chilled to within an inch of it’s life. That’s just the way I roll.

I don’t play golf.

So really, I’m not a proper dad. Well, not by the standards of the Father’s Day Gift People. They’ve decided that all dads really want is a football-shaped beer dispenser. Or a beer-shaped football. Or golf-flavoured beer. Or whatever.

It’s all rather depressing. Unlike Jane (who has a rabid dislike of Mother’s Day – with good reasons) I kind of like the idea of Father’s Day. I don’t want to be waited on hand and foot, I’ve just never had a international day for me before and I want to milk it a bit.

But, if the Father’s Day Gift People have their way I’ll be getting a card with a joke about slippers on it, and a golfball-shaped opener for football-shaped beer bottles. Sigh.

I have it on good authority that Tom’s got me a little something though, and his taste is impeccable, so maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised!

Most birthdays and Christmases I’d get a Lego model. Starting with the basic building block sets, then the Space Lego sets with the fancy V-shaped wing bits, then the grown-up Technical Lego sets (you could tell they were grown-up because they had holes in).

I’d empty the bits out on the dining table. Lay out the immaculately-produced manual, and turn to the first page. Looking at the first diagram, finding the bits that matched the picture. Savouring the anticipation.

“Would you like me to help?” my Dad would ask. Innocently.

…

Twenty minutes later I’d be sitting, chin in hands, frustratedly watching my Dad make the model.

He wouldn’t get away with it for long. Mum would come in and say “oi! Let Simon make it!!” Dad would reluctantly relinquish the model.

I’d dismantle what he’d done and start again from scratch, silently vowing that when I was a Dad, I’d never barge in and monopolise my son’s toys.

No, I didn’t. Even writing that I realised I was kidding myself. I vowed that one day I’d barge in and monopolise MY son’s toys.

I’ve tried to deny it. When Tom got a lovely set of building blocks for his birthday, I tried to let him learn to play with them at his own pace.

It didn’t last long. I thought I’d just help a little.

Tom, quite rightfully, was having none of it.

That’s how babies minds work, I think, they thrive on discovered predictability. It’s not enough to try something once to see what happens, you have to do it again to see if what happened still happens. Then do it a dozen or so more times just to really be sure. While I watch Tom doing it, I can almost hear the little neurons in his bonce strengthening by repeated use.

Tom’s at an age where he’s still learning about the basic physical properties of the world around him, and predictability is important. Balls bounce, wheels roll, blocks stack or tumble.

One of Tom’s Christmas presents was an electronic activity centre. The V-Tech “My First Steps Walker”, a baby walker with a panel on the front featuring an electronic cornucopia of lights and buttons for little fingers to press. I’m a gadget freak, so it’s actually to my surprise that, where toys are concerned, I’ve become a bit of a Luddite. Because for all its electronic wizardry, the My First Steps Walker isn’t predictable, and that makes me question its value as a toy for very small kids.

Press the blue circular button marked with a “1” and a friendly lady’s voice will say “one!”, but press it again and it says instead “blue circle!”. So is the little tyke supposed to learn that blue circular buttons say “one”, or that buttons marked “1” say “blue circle”?

It gets worse than that; flip the wings of the yellow plastic butterfly and the whole gadget changes function. Now it’s not “teaching” about shapes and colours and numbers, it’s teaching about “music”. The blue circular button doesn’t say “blue” or “circle” or “one”; now it says “rock and roll!”, and launches into the least rock-and-roll bit of music you’ve ever heard.

Now, I know eventually Tom will need to learn that things aren’t predictable, and that most buttons on electronic gadgetry do different things at different times. Eventually, probably sooner rather than later, he’ll work out that a computer can do an infinite number of things with just a few dozen buttons. But first, I think, he needs the predictability. He need to press the blue circular button and for it to say “blue circle!” every time, so that he delights in the fact that he predicted it was going to say that.

I wouldn’t take the V-Tech walker away from him, because he enjoys bashing away at it, particularly the spinny cogs bit. But I don’t think it’s really teaching him much yet, and I’d much rather he spent an instructive 5 minutes repeatedly dropping the same ball into the same hole. Unpredictability can wait.

I was playing with Tom at the weekend, bouncing him on my knees in time to the Glee sountrack album I’d bought (my current Gleekdom is a subject for another post!). Tom was smiling and laughing, and Jane was standing at my shoulder taking some pictures. The song playing was a cover of Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline”, and as some songs can, it immediately transported me back to when I first heard it, back to that Polaroid-tinged place and time. I could taste the happy memories.

And, like the hugely soppy fool I am, I realised I was crying. Big happy tears. On some level I sensed that a huge circle was being completed, and by having my own little family I was getting back to a place I’d left 30-odd years ago. The setting is totally different, and I’m playing a different part, but it’s the same.

My son’s too young to start having permanent memories yet, but when he does I want them to be memories like those. Aimlessly happy random memories that ring with laughter, music and wonder. I want for him to never have to grow up and learn all the bad things that happen; and simultaneously I want for him to grow up and learn all the things he possibly can. Maybe even one day sit with a small child on his knee and be transported back to those JPEG-tinged (or, whatever) days of the mid 2010s.

He’ll probably be as soppy about it as I am.

Actually, it’s okay to listen to advice from other fathers, as long as you remember that:

• 75% of it won’t be relevant to your situation.
• 20% of it they will have made up just to frighten you.
• 5% of it will be true, and relevant, but so scary you’re better off not knowing until it happens.

Definitely, whatever you do, don’t buy a book on fatherhood. They’re just not worth the stress.

My wife went through a spate of buying books about pregnancy and motherhood. She found them reassuring, because she’s one of these people who takes comfort in knowing as much as possible about what to expect and what can go wrong. I’m of the opposite camp. The Ignorance is Bliss camp.

(Actually we don’t really have a camp, it’s more of a muddy hole in the ground covered in a tarp. None of us fancied going to the lecture about making proper camps.)

The trouble with books about parenthood is the information they impart basically falls into two categories: Things That Should Happen, and Things That Shouldn’t Happen. The first category is stuff like “crawling, talking, breathing”, the latter stuff like “turning green, smoking, head revolving Exorcist stylee.”

“By month eight,” a parenting book cheerfully announces, “your child should be reading small books of French poetry, occasionally looking up to exclaim sagely ‘ah! so true!’ and gaze wistfully out of a window”.

I look over at my son (who’s engaged with opening and closing the wardrobe door, each time with a yelp of surprise that, even after the 500th repetition, it still contains The Inside of a Wardrobe) and feel more than a little like a failed parent.

They do say in the book that these developmental milestones are just for the “average” baby. But I don’t want to be told that my son is below average in anything! It just makes me feel bad.

The other problem with reading the milestones is that, for me, they totally ruin all the surprises. I want to be totally amazed every time my son does some little new thing, I don’t want spoilers.

Then under the “Things Your Child Shouldn’t Be Doing”, the books delight in doing stuff like listing the symptoms of all the myriad rare genetic diseases you should be looking out for. This merely induces in me a state of hypochondria by proxy… what if that mark above his eye isn’t a scratch, but the first signs of the onset of a horrible skin wasting syndrome named after the only two people who ever had it?!

It’s all rather upsetting, and I’d much rather be safe back in my muddy hole under the tarp.

Actually, I’d much rather be totally clueless, but handily have a wife who’s read all the books and knows pretty much exactly what to do. Which luckily is what I have. Ignorance with instant knowledge on tap, that’s true bliss.

Things tend to head towards entropy rather than away. It’s easy to make a pile of wires and broken plastic out of a Macintosh, but it’s a lot harder to make a Macintosh out of a pile of wires and broken plastic. Equally it’s quite hard to turn a McFlurry back into its constituent… whatever the hell it is they make McFlurries out of. But you get the idea.

Ancient peoples tended to take big scary natural processes and anthropomorphise them; make them human. Or, more accurately, make them gods.

Thus you had the Gods of Thunder, and the gods of the sun, and the seasons, and the floods. Each job given to a vaguely humanoid personage, so we could blame them for why everything is so crap all the time. The ancient equivalent of a cabinet minister.

The ancients didn’t anthropomorphise entropy, probably because entropy hadn’t been invented back then. They didn’t have McFlurries, for starters.

This is all going somewhere… I think I may have fathered the God of Entropy.

I realise that this is a major claim, but I have proof.

Ever since Tom has been able to move of his own accord, he’s shown a single-minded determination to destroy. Not just chew things, or bash things, or drop things on the floor. I understand that all babies do that. Tom seems to be far more dedicated.

If you make a pile of blocks, he’ll immediately knock it over. If you make a pile of blocks on the other side of the room, he’ll immediately crawl across just to knock it over. He doesn’t do it with a squeal of delight, or any kind of emotion at all. Just a certain grim workmanlike determination. Because it’s his job. Because he’s the God of Entropy.

He has a general dislike for anything being on top of another thing. Our coffee tables are now merely bare centerpieces to the piles of magazines, letters and books strewn around then.

Pass him a toy while he’s seated in a high chair, and within seconds he will have dropped it on the floor, gazing bemusedly over the side to see where it’s gone. Jane claims that he’s simply “testing gravity”, but I’m pretty sure even Issac Newton only lobbed a few things on the floor before he got the hang of it, and he bloody invented gravity!

Tom chucks stuff on the floor because gravity is his friend and weapon. Because he’s the God of Entropy.

Jane and I were admittedly never the tidiest people before Tom came along. But even we stare in wonder at the share scale of untidiness he can muster in a few short seconds of unfettered access to, say, a sock drawer.

It’s because he works at the untidiness. Because, I’m pretty sure now, he is the God of Entropy.

The worrying thing, and I hesitate to tell you this, is that entropy is insidious. Scientists tell us that you can always do work to restore order, but you can never quite get back to where you started. A little bit of energy is lost to entropy forever.

Eventually, entropy will destroy the universe.

I may have fathered the doom of Mankind.

He’s cute though.