My amazing daughter is two today. Here are twenty things I’ve learnt since she was born.....

A good night’s sleep is anything over five hoursA good night’s sleep is anything that adds up to five hours spread over ten hoursIt is not necessary - or possible - to sit down and watch a full 90 minutes of football on TVYou develop very strong views about things you didn’t know existed - I hate how mean Peppa Pig is to George but really like how cheeky Upsey Daisy is with Iggle PiggleCarrying a car seat with your newborn baby in it from the hospital ward/room to your car is what real pressure feels likeMary Poppins is the greatest film ever made……….actually I knew this over two years ago but since I have now watched it more than 478 times my opinion has hardenedYou knew your wife was smarter and better-looking than you and then you watched her give birth and she became a national hero tooYou think you have experienced a feeling of achievement - academically, professionally, politically, on the sporting field etc and then you feed your baby, change her nappy and settle her for a sleep successfully and you feel you’ve become a Nobel Prize winnerYou can drive at 15 MPH and still think its fastYou have become very right wing on issues involving criminal offences against children (lock ‘em up and throw away the key!) and incredibly left wing about our responsibilities to children around the world (suffer the little children unto me) - especially the horror of the European migrant crisisWhen you take a child’s temperature you need to do it three times or it doesn’t countSky Plus is the eighth wonder of the world - not being able to pause the TV and rewind it would make viewing impossibleYou cannot see/hear anything remotely emotional/moving on TV, radio, in the news or listen to any songs sung by Adele without cryingThe first time your child has a cold or a cough, or even a runny nose, you think the great plague has returnedYou can still do impressions of Bert and Ernie without having watched Sesame Street for twenty yearsDespite promising you won’t be one of those dads, one of the first things you buy online without supervision is a Liverpool shirt and an Ireland jerseyWatching sport on the TV without shouting is harder than it looksYou think you know what love is but you don’t - not until you meet your child for the first time and they look at you - from that moment on your life changes foreverYou can remember your life before your child entered it but it was nowhere near as good as your life is nowYou love being called Dad