The shit blog of Paul Chris Jones

Dear Diary. Today is Saturday. 0-year-old is ten days old. There's no school today so 4-year-old spent the day at home. So Girlfriend and I had both 4-year-old and 0-year-old to look after today. You'd think we'd be in over our heads, but 0-year-old's easy to take care of. All he does is shit, wee, eat, and sleep, and most of the time he's asleep. It's 4-year-old who's the challenging one. He's four years old now and he seems to be getting more and more demanding and annoying. He has this way of saying "MoMEEEE" and DaDEEEEE" over and over when he wants something. Girlfriend hates it.

I managed to calm 4-year-old down by reading him Goosebumps books. I skip over the details and just read the most important parts to him. Like this, we can finish a Goosebumps book in twenty minutes.

4-year-old and I are currently both obsessed with Goosebumps. He wants to watch the Goosebumps movie but Girlfriend says he's still too young. I say let him watch it. It's only a PG.

4-year-old wanted to water the plants on the balcony. So he filled the watering can to the brim and tried to carry it through the apartment to the balcony. The only problem is that it was too heavy for him and he spilt most of the water on the floor. I had to follow behind him with a mop. Then, when he got to the balcony, he poured out the entire contents of the watering can into a small pot of tiny apple tree plants, thereby probably killing them.

Then we planted some more apple seeds into a pot. I let him fill the pot with soil but most of the soil ended up on the floor.

In the afternoon we all went out for a walk. 4-year-old had an ice lolly and Girlfriend and I each had an ice cream. 4-year-old finished his ice lolly and wanted some of my ice cream, so he stuck his spoon into it. His spoon got stuck, so he pulled as hard as he could, and the spoon leapt out, along with some of the ice cream, which landed on the floor. I was lucky it didn't land on my t-shirt.

0-year-old started crying so we went to a playground so Girlfriend could breastfeed him somewhere quiet. In the playground, I saw Mari, one of the practitioners at the nursery 4-year-old used to go to. Mari's a lesbian and she's adopted a baby.

Mari and her baby were playing in the playground. I thought I'd better say hello to Mari or else I'd look rude. But I have social anxiety and so I've never actually spoken to Mari before. I've recently learned the cause of social anxiety is excessive worrying about what other people think of you. So all I have to do, to make the anxiety go away, is stop worrying about what people think of me. I also apply three packets of testosterone gel to my body every day so that probably helps some.

I caught Mari's eye and put my hand up to say hello. Mari saw me and looked surprised.

"What's her name?" I said, gesturing to the baby.

"Mia," said Mari.

"How old is she?"

"Twelve months."

"She's big, isn't she?"

"Yeah, she's pretty big."

Just then I heard 4-year-old calling me: "DaDEEEE". Phew. Saved by 4-year-old. I turned away from Mari and went over to see 4-year-old.

I think the conversation went pretty well though.

We heard drums. Girlfriend said, "It's the Manaies". The Manaies are Roman soldiers who walk through Girona on Good Friday. Not real Roman soldiers though. That would be weird, and also possible evidence of time travel. I mean the Manaies are people dressed as Roman soldiers. 4-year-old was excited so we went to see. We walked through a tunnel and there was a homeless man there watching the Mainaies. The homeless man smelled so Girlfriend and 4-year-old walked off out the tunnel while I stayed in the tunnel with 0-year-old. The Roman soldiers appeared, walking down the street. It was a strange, anachronistic sight to see Roman soldiers walking through modern-day Girona. Their shiny gold armour glinted in the sun. All the while a loud drum was beating rhythmically to which the soldiers marched. Most of the soldiers were men and the rest were a few young boys. There were no female soldiers. It wouldn't be historically accurate to have female Roman soldiers, I suppose. I went past the homeless man and caught up with Girlfriend and 4-year-old.

I took 0-year-old out of the pram. Some old ladies came up and asked "How old is he?"

"Ten days," I said.

"Ooooh, only ten days."

Babies are magnets to old women. It's a shame babies aren't magnets to young women too.