Harry's first Christmas

Melissa is always excited at the prospect of Christmas and, with Harry around, she’s even more festive this year.

This meant our decorations went up on December 1. Now I love Christmas but putting decorations up while trying to entertain a 10-month-old is no easy task. However, thanks largely to Melissa’s determination, we managed it.

So we’ve now got decorations everywhere – and I mean everywhere. The inside of our house looks like the set from Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Goodness knows what it will do to our electric bill.

But I’ve been warned not to do my usual ‘bah humbug’ about the decorations this year. As Melissa points out, it’s Harry’s first Christmas and we should make the effort.

Having said that, I’ve no idea what Harry makes of it all, and I’m fairly sure he hasn’t got a clue why our house is suddenly bathed in dazzling light. He does like the twinkle lights, though, and his favourite game at the moment is trying to grab them at every opportunity.

Anyway, our home is certainly feeling suitably festive now, which has got me thinking about Christmas presents, Harry’s in particular. I would like to buy him something exciting, such as a train set. I know he’s still little but he could always sit in his cot and watch the trains running.

Unfortunately Melissa has seen straight through that argument. As far as she is concerned, I shouldn’t be using Harry as an excuse to buy toys that I want to play with.

It must be a boy thing. My brother visited at the weekend and one of his first questions was ‘When’s he old enough to have a Scalextric?’

Of course, Melissa is quite right that Harry’s just a bit too young to appreciate train sets and racing cars but I’m sure he’s going to have a great time anyway – there’ll be plenty of people to entertain him and plenty of boxes to chew, tear and throw around. What more could a baby want?