Ching Chong Cha Cheat

Ching Chong Cha
Hick Hack Hock
Rock Paper Scissors
Which ever you choose to call it, hopefully not the latter – zero imagination – it is probably the one game you cannot cheat at. It's Ching Chong behind your back and on Cha you present your flat hand, fist or ... hang on a minute ...
In wanting to describe the placement of your fingers for scissors I realize it is the double-fingered, vulgarism of old, now discarded in favour of the single middle finger, but I digress. Peter Pointer and Toby Tall, with Tommy Thumb, Ruby Ring and Baby Small tucked in represent scissors.
So it's somewhere between 5.30 and 6.00am and neither my husband nor I can physically open our eyes let alone move a muscle so actions like nipping to the kitchen to warm a bottle, remove a dry nappy and pop her on the potty, respond cordially to the now ten-minute old plea of: "Can I have breakfast please?" Are just not possible.
Regardless of the night before, actually getting myself out of bed in the morning is a gargantuan task. My husband does it. Not because he's a morning person or because he finds it any easier, but because he knows I will outlast him.
In order to even make it (dressed with my teeth brushed) to the front door with the kids (dressed with their teeth brushed) and all the necessary apparel for their day, who swims on a Wednesday? I have to go to sleep, sleep, not bed, no later than 9.30, at a push 10pm, but then I'm risking throwing on yesterday's clothes to get out the door.
Before I had children I couldn't understand why my parents ate dinner so early. Now I know. Habit. Years of eating early so you can go to bed early so you can get up early.
Is it hideous to every now and then wish with every fibre for those precious Sunday mornings before you had kids?
Here's how bad it is:

• I caution my husband not to trawl for a movie on the tellie; it'll end too late.
• I talk myself into no longer liking a programme I've always enjoyed; it's a double bill and ends too late.
• Some one gave us the complete goodness-knows-how-many seasons of Breaking Bad over six months ago. We know we'll never just be able to watch a single episode each night, once we start it'll be full-on, "Just one more." It'll end too late. We've actually likened the commitment to having another child.
• We turn a DVD movie into a mini-series.
• Every day I promise myself I'm going to spend some time writing in the evening. I don't. I crawl guiltily across those broken promises into bed with my book making small groaning noises in appreciation of how good it feels to be lying down.

So our cheek's are plastered to our pillows, our daughter (legs too short to climb out of bed on her own and use the potty and developmental age too young to fetch and warm her own milk) has given up on calling "Maameee" and is now calling, "Daadee" and our son is now in the kitchen banging about with stools to reach the items necessary to make his own breakfast – enough to chill the core of any OCD parent – and I say: "Ching Chong Cha?"

Eyes closed on Ching Chong, we both manage to peer at the result, hands raised aloft on Cha .

Round one: I lose.

Round two: I win

Round three: In a do-or-die final I pull out my scissors and watch, aghast as his paper morphs into a rock!