Twenty Nineteen in review

Hiya Roop. Once again Christmas is just over and I’m writing you a letter to let you know everything that happened this year. It’s 14th of January 2020 and I’m on the train to Rochdale to work. Before I left this morning I woke you up to say bye and you were upset because you like having me around in the day. You’ve got even more used to having me around during Christmas. It’s not so bad though because I only do 3 days a week in the office so we get a lot of time together.

It really has been the best Christmas I’ve had since I was a little boy because you have known what’s going on properly for the first time this year. Christmas started for us in the last week of November when all the Santa decorations started coming out in the shops so there was no telling you to wait until December like I used to with Mummy. I think we watched Home Alone for the first time on the 2nd to last weekend of August, and we watch it for the last time on the 5th of Jan which was the depressing day before I went back to work and we watched it while we took the tree and decorations down and Mummy and Daddy had a Dissarano to cheer us up. You got a mountain of presents this year and you got everything you asked Santa for. Some of the presents you got were: A scooter, Kylo Ren & Rey figures, Dinosaur Helicopter (the dino obsession has been strong since I let you watch Jurassic Park), Army men, Cowboy guns, and too many more to mention.

You’ve changed so much since I last wrote last year’s letter. Around then you had started to say a few simple words, and you were walking, but a year later you are a proper little boy. You run around chattering away constantly. You can say lots of things even though most of the time only me and Mummy understand what you’re saying. You’re Mummy is the best at understanding you, I sometimes have to ask her what you’re saying. You’re potty trained as well which only took you a week to learn how to do. Although in typical Rupert style when you first started you refused to sit on the potty, you would only do a wee stood up like a fully grown man. Everyone found that funny but we couldn’t get you to do a poo because of it. Luckily I had a cunning plan involving bribery and a packet of chocolate buttons which worked immediately.

You are a very good little boy now. At the start of the year you were in the midst of the terrible twos, and they really were terrible. For the first 6 months of the year you were very hard work, so particular about everything all the time. Every night you had to take a mound of random little toys to bed with you or you would be screaming the place down. We could hardly ever get you go in the pram, but you wouldn’t walk either so we were always carrying you, then when we put you down you used to just run off into the road! It was a stressful time but thankfully it seems like all that is behind us. You sleep in your bed 9 times out of 10 now (even though you are up at 6 or before most days!) which means we get a much better sleep. You’re the most loving little child I think there’s ever been, always full of hugs and kisses for us. If me or Mummy ever tell you we are going to do anything that you really like (like saying we will go to the park or get your paints out or something) you get so happy you come over to us and kiss our hand or knee.

There are lots of things we do together all the time. Every night before bed we all go upstairs (including Ted) and lie in our bed and read you a story and let you fall asleep there then we carry you into your own bed. You like to feed the birds with Mummy, putting bread on the bird table outside while Mummy does her funny whistling to let the birds know the food is there. Me and you always have baths together where you laugh at me doing the silly Mr Duck voice, and you put bubbles on your face and pretend to be Santa and give me presents. We always say hello to Ted when we go downstairs in the morning and give him a kiss. If it’s weekend and a very early morning (it quite often is) and it’s my turn to get up early, me and you sit on the sofa and you have milk and watch Peppa Pig and I drink coffee and do some coding on my laptop, or play on my Switch. We take Ted out on walks a lot together to the Castle. We all go up to the top and pretend to look for Dinosaurs while Ted runs around like a mad dog and chases squirrels.

One thing you aren’t good at is eating. We struggle to get you to eat anything except chicken nuggets, chips, or pizza. You’re a chocolate fiend and always want choc choc but never any fruit or veg. Me and you’re Mummy are stressed out about it as we have a really healthy diet and we always cook fresh food. In the last week though, you’ve started having the odd bit of banana and the other night you ate chicken and gravy for the first time in a year at your Nana Ormisher’s so hopefully this will pass and next January I’ll be saying you’re eating our chicken broth and curries.

Last year you had just started to watch the odd film but this year our lounge has been like a cinema. I setup a media server in the house and started building a big movie library so you’ve watched pretty much every Disney & Pixar film, plus a load of other classics. Last weekend we watched E.T which you loved and have been running around going “E.T Phone Home” in the silly voice. A few months ago I also let you watch Jurassic Park which started a big dino obsession (or dow-dow’s as you call them). To be honest I probably shouldn’t have let you watch it but I hadn’t watch it in years and had forgotten it was basically a horror movie. You weren’t really scared though, even with the T-Rex.

You do seem to like violent stuff even though you’re small. I was like that. I was obsessed with ghosts, dinosaurs, soldiers, or anything else along those lines. You have a massive collection of guns and swords and you really love dressing up like a cowboy (or yeeha as you call them). Your Grandad Knight made you a belt to put your holsters and swords in, and you love swanning about the house with them on. Sometimes coming into the kitchen pretending to gun me down while I’m making tea. In the days when I’m working your Grandad sometimes looks after you and you really like watching old westerns and war films on Movies For Men with him. You definitely have good taste and you’re not even 3 yet! You’re just starting to like playing games with us as well which is a good sign. We have Operation which you like, and I’ve started getting the Chess board out and trying to teach you which positions the pieces go in at the start (although at the minute you just like holding a little plastic sword next to the Knight and pretending it’s killing the other pieces). I love board games and I’m hoping as you get older we can have lots of fun playing some proper games (I’m dreaming of someone to play RISK with!).

One thing you’re starting to show some interest in is video games. You have been watching me play them for ages, but you have recently started wanting to actually control the game. This is cool but also sometimes annoying. For some reason you really like Hollow Knight, which is funny because it’s renowned to be a hard game. The other day for the first time you actually understood that if you press the stick to the side that’s the way the character walks. That may not seem like much but it’s quite a big deal as it usually takes kids a lot longer until they understand indirect actions like that. I think at some point soon I’m going to buy you a 2DS and get you some kid friendly games. I really hope you’re a Nintendo kid. When me and your Uncle Nath were little we were Sega kids as they were the cooler brand (they had Sonic), but even then I sort of knew that the Mario games were better as I played them at other kids houses. We will definitely have loads of fun playing games together anyway, for me it will be like being back at Uni when I had always had someone to play games with!

In my last letter I went through every holiday we went on but I can’t be bothered doing that as we went on loads and it isn’t all that interesting. I’ll just talk about the most fun ones we had. The first trip away we had was London at the start of the year. That was a brilliant little long weekend. We stopped in Belsize Park and had a nice quiet time looking around Hampstead. You also met our old friend Bridgett Jones who Mummy and Daddy used to go and stay with every year. She thought you were lovely and said she liked your little ears. You were really well behaved which we were very happy about because at the time you were being a bit troublesome at home. The highlight for you was probably the zoo and seeing the Lions have a big fight right in front of us behind the glass. That was very cool. One little night away we had that was a disaster was when we went camping in Settle. It was in May and there was a heat wave. We had just bought a new inner tent for the big bell tent and I was keen to try it out so I took a late notice day off work and we went to Settle. The day was lovely as it was really hot and we played footy and played on the park. In the night though Mummy fell off the blow up bed and fell onto the inner tent which ripped and fell down on us. This caused a big panic as we had the electic heater on and we were all shouting under the fabric. We managed to get out the inner tent and slept on top of it, and while we were lying there calming down we could hear an Owl flying around making screeching sounds. You absolutely loved that and spoke about it for weeks after, so maybe it was worth the annoyance. To make things worse the day after the car battery was flat, so all in all not very succesful. Our main holiday of the year was Tossa de Mar in June with your Nana and Grandad Knight. That was a really fun holiday and we all loved it there. It was good for me and your Mummy as we had someone to help out and give us a break from constantly playing with you. The weather was nice but it was windy which meant the big pool was quite cold and you wouldn’t really go in it. They had 2 hot jacuzzi’s though and you just wanted to go in there constantly. When you got out you used to sit there shivering with blue lips wrapped up in towels. They also had a little games room and you were obssessed with the teddy claw machine and just wanted to go on it all the time. We must have spent 30 euros in it and didn’t even win anything. My main memory of the holiday was when we were chilling in the room while Mummy got ready. You were loving Disney’s Tarzan at the time (great Phil Collins soundtrack) and used to lie on the bed watching that while I sat on the balcony having a whiskey and listening to some tunes. The last good holiday of the year was York in December. We always go somewhere in December for Christmas and York was a good choice this year. It was very Christmassey and we had lots of fun. We went to The Yorkshire Museum which you loved (I’m impressed with how much you enjoy museums), and we went to a big stately home called Castle Howard where you met the real Santa and we looked round a beautiful old palace. That’s it for the holidays. We had loads of good ones and some not so good (Lancaster & Javea will not be mentioned).

You might also be interested to know what I’ve done this year as well. I changed jobs at the end of Summer. I was working at a place called SlicedBread where I absolutely hated as it was easily the worst place I ever worked. I went to a place called FootAsylum which is much better but I’m at home less now. I don’t have much choice though as Mummy is full time looking after you so I need to earn the pennies! My favourite album this year was probably Frank Turner’s Love & Ire Song which I absolutely love more than anything. I’ve also had a bit of a Kate Bush obsession throughout the year. In terms of books, I haven’t actually read as many as I usually do this year. I think that’s because I’ve been playing on the Switch a lot on the train and in bed etc so I haven’t had as much time for reading. One book I absolutely loved though was Brandon Sanderson’s Words of Radiance which is a very long and epic fantasy novel. It was an absolute page turner and I devoured it’s 1000+ pages in a few weeks. This year has been a good year for films because you’ve started watching proper films with us now, and also the everyman cinema opened in Clitheroe which I was thrilled about. I’d probably say my 2 favourite films of the year were Marriage Story and Little Women. These aren’t films you’ll like until you’re an adult but I also really liked the last Star Wars film Rise Of Skywalker which I went to see on opening night at the cinema. Another thing I’ve just started is piano lessons. I bought a piano at the start of last year but didn’t make a proper effort to learn. I hope by the time I write the next letter I’ll have stuck with it and bought myself a proper acoustic upright piano as a treat.

So that’s it for 2019’s letter little Roopy. Me and Mummy love you more than anything and are really proud at the brilliant little boy you are becoming.

Love Daddy