The greatest gift is the gift of sleep

As we settle into yet another night of George screaming uncomfortably, I find myself thinking about the up and coming weekend. Father's day!

I'm not really one for celebrating Mothers and Fathers day, with regards to gifting. I don't know the history of it, nor am I keen to find out, to me it's a money making exercise for retailers and Resturanters etc. Maybe I'm just a tight arse..... infact there's no maybe about it 😀 but I do like how it encourages family time.

If you're lucky enough to have your parents, I believe it is important to celebrate the sacrifices that they undoubtedly made to ensure that you recieved the best possible upbringing that they could provide for you because as I'm learning rapidly, being a parent is difficult

The gesture of gifting flowers, chocolates, bottles or beer etc is lovely but why should it be on a date dictated. (Although its all alot more extravagant these days) Surely it's more special as a random surprise? I don't know, it's just my thoughts.

If I said I wasn't looking forward to my first father's day I would be lying. I am excited and I will cherish it, as I don't know how many fathers days I will get with George. Nanna and Pops kindly arrived with gifts of clothes for George last week, as they quite often do, only this time they included a one piece with "I love my daddy" emblazoned on it, so of course George will be wearing that come Sunday.

As well as being Fathers day, Sunday is also England's opening fixture in their Euro 24 campaign. For me this is the perfect combination. I always dreamed of having a son to enjoy the sport with. Obviously things haven't worked out quite as we hoped but George is with us, that's the main thing. I have conceded that it would be difficult to take George to a live sporting fixture and accept that he wouldn't understand it as I would have wished. Still it hasn't stopped us buying the ridiculously overly priced replica shirts ready for our first international football tournament as a little family unit.

George is visiting HopeHouse next week for planned respite, but Natalie took a phone call last week offering us the opportunity of an additional night.....Sunday!

My immediate response was NO! Purely because it was Fathers day and the Euros. Natalie the voice of reason explained that the likelihood was that George would cry through the football and that an extra night respite would do us both the world of good, especially as we are so fatigued and have a busy week ahead of us next week.

We have an allocation of 18 days respite per year and at the moment George is to complex to be babysat, so the only opportunity we get to decompress is when George is in respite. Guess what, George is having an extra night added to his stay.

It is the right thing to for all of us, who would have thought that the best gift I could recieve for fathers day was a night away from my son.

We will make the most of the morning and enjoy a decent family dinner before taking George for his stay, safe in the knowledge that he will be extremely well cared for.

Let's just hope I get more than 2 England games with him and maybe, just maybe I can watch England lift the trophy with him on 14th July? (A guy can dream!)