This Christmas Eve, despite our best efforts, husband got mildly pissed at a friend’s gathering, which in returning home led to a slow descent into cantankerous intolerance as we tried to get our three-year-old to bed amidst tears, protestations and threats of no presents if he didn’t go to sleep. 

He was still up, faffing about at 10pm, so I decided that, seeing as I’m the pregnant one, I should keep watch upstairs whilst husband wrapped the rest of the presents downstairs. But apparently this counted as ‘ordering him around’ and led to moans that he had to do everything (the addition of having to make half a cream cheese sandwich and a bowl of ice cream for three-year-old, and putting two pizzas in the oven for us, had pushed him over the edge into ‘expecting too much’). I then discovered him asleep downstairs half way through the wrapping. 

An argument ensued because in his slightly merry state, he couldn’t fit all the Father Christmas presents in the stocking but couldn’t process it would be alright to put some under the tree instead – this followed him smashing the loft ladder onto his foot trying to get the presents he had already wrapped down from the loft and stepping on the brio track in three-year-old’s bedroom, reducing part of it to splinters. 

Everything finished, we slumped into bed and then realised we had forgotten to eat the frigging mince pie, drink the hot chocolate, sprinkle the magic dust and bite the carrot top off for Father Christmas and his reindeer (“I’m not biting the top off that manky carrot – yes you bloody are,” says I). Merry Christmas folks!