Don't we all know that? Ha!

There are definitely two kinds of people: parents and people without children. They live in different universes.

Either we are parents and are witnessing first hand that we are not able to live our lives as before any more (going hand in hand with a strong need to communicate about all the things that we are now exposed to on a daily basis) - or we are without children and think about people with children that they have become total bores, only being able to talk about their children and related things, and the children, oh don't let me start about the children…

Apart from being completely absorbed by the antics of the little monsters our emotional world also changes. Yep.

Some years back I had a conversation with somebody who claimed that only in a German movie a baby could be killed or die (he'd just seen such a movie, goodness only knows which one it was), never in an American one. And that it was just completely sick. Needless to say this was an American who said that. Well, we all know that Hollywood movies are usually quite predictable and yes, a dying baby would not make a movie easier to digest and therefore sell.

While it might not be easy to see a baby die in a movie, it still might be part of the story. So I still think there is nothing wrong with this. We all watch movies in which people die, so why are babies so different?

The point is that ever since I've got my own child I can understand a lot better why dying babies in a movie are hard to take. I've become completely soppy when there are children involved in a movie and anybody around them dies or something happens to the children themselves. So much actually that it can become unbearable and all I can do is cry (and I never used to be a movie crier).

The person who was making the comment about German movies was a parent to three children at the time, so naturally this would be a lot more upsetting to him than to me (no children at that point). However, I still maintain that death is a normal part of our lives and therefore should not be censored out of movies.

And now I've run out of steam. I'm sure we all could come up with lots more examples how parents change through our children but for today this is enough. After all I've got to think about my night that will most likely be disrupted several times by my toddler and the possibility of a very early start of the day.

Some time before Christmas I had cut some skewers into smaller pieces, so that Yannick had some sticks that he could transport with his train trucks. I usually put them away before other children came around as they were not completely safe with smaller children (as in "don't eat") but they were OK for Yannick.

When we were in Germany over the Christmas period (just a few nights in) Yannick woke up early one night and was getting more and more upset. He was crying and saying something. It took a while before we worked out that it was about the little sticks.

Finally we got it: he was saying 'Bella has your sticks' (Bella is one of his friends, and Yannick still mostly refers to himself with 'you' - so he meant 'his' sticks). He was really inconsolable about this. We were really surprised at this coming up there and then.

Eventually I remembered that Bella had visited us not long before the Germany trip and that I also gave her a set of sticks (she had seen Yannick's and wanted them). I had said to Yannick that these were different sticks from the ones he had and he seemed to understand at the time as he didn't get bothered.

When we realised what the dream was about it looked like that he actually felt cheated and that he thought that Bella took some of his sticks. So I had to explain to him over and over again, that those were different sticks and that his ones were safely at home. It was a bizarre conversation in a way as these little sticks were really nothing, they could be reproduced at any time and yet, they were so valuable to Yannick.

Eventually our little man went back to sleep and we were sitting there in disbelief about what just happened.