You’ve been away. You’re on your way home. Your head is bursting with your out-of-home experience, and quite likely with your hangover. Across your addled brain run visions of your homecoming. Will your dream become reality? Dream: They will be sleeping peacefully (on your return at 8.30pm). You will drop a kiss on their foreheads, making them smile in their slumber. You will turn in within the hour. Reality: They are both wide awake and instantly launch a “story offensive”, which quickly spirals into an argument about who should get read to by mummy first that can only be settled by a light saber duel. When you finally extricate yourself, they come downstairs every two minutes for half an hour. Your early bedtime trickles through your fingers. Dream: He will wake up with an ecstatic smile because mummy’s home. He will cling cutely to you all day, such was his longing to be with you. Reality: He gives you evils as soon as he lays eyes on you. He slaps you with an open palm when you try to kiss him and cries hysterically if you try to hold him, lurching towards his father. Your months and months of round-the-clock devotion to his every need are wiped out by one day of daddy daycare. Dream: Have sucked up all that water you have lovingly poured on them every evening for weeks, have shaken off their bugs after you vigorously sprayed them with a pesticide that seared your skin, have guzzled the Miracle Gro sweeties you dug in for them, and burst into a bloom to rival Kew Gardens. Personally, I don’t have any pets but I’m sure they’d welcome you home with a nice loose poo in the hall. Dream: Wakes you at 10am the next day with a cup of tea and (if necessary) an Alka Seltzer. Is gentle with you all day, cooks you dinner and tucks you in nice and early. Reality: You’ve been away – therefore, you’re on duty. Never mind if you didn’t get to bed till 2am while you were away, you are getting up with the baby, leading the day’s childcare and cooking tea. Does my recent experience incline me to be tender with my husband when he returns from his 501st stag do later this year? What do you think? Other readers who viewed this item also viewed: