Each night when I get home and unlock the front door I hear happiness. As I trudge up the stairs my three-year-old daughter repeatedly shouts, "Daddy's home! Daddy's home!" until I reach the top.
Then, once I've cleared the baby security gate, she sprints towards me as fast as herlittle legs will carry her and tries to knock me to the ground with the force of her running hug.
Like the good father I am I don't let her. With her little arms wrapped tight around my legs she excitedly declares, "I'm using fall down powers!" and then I'll stumble around a bit while she makes 'whooshing' noises to indicate she's using her fall down powers. After some mock struggle, I'll topple to the ground while she laughs and laughs and laughs.
Then, using her stand up powers, she pulls me up and says, "you wait here," before going to the end of the lounge, turning around and running back at me to play the whole thing out again.
After she runs away from me but before she crashes back into me I'll pick up my eight-month old son. He's not crawling on his knees yet but gets around by shuffling forward on his belly. When he gets excited his eyes light up and he flaps his little arms and kicks his chubby legs and makes a sort of happy "aaaaaah" noise.
So he's smiling widely and flapping about going, "aaaaaah", and she's laughing and shouting "fall down powers! fall down powers!" and trying to push me over and in that moment they're both so happy.
This won't last, of course. Soon there will be tears and tantrums over any number of the things that have to happen before the last bedtime book is read, and the lights are flicked off and I tiptoe out of the bedroom. Hopefully by 7pm, but usually closer to half past.
With the kids asleep the TV comes on. Before settling into whatever series we're binging we'll flick on YouTube to watch the late night monologues from America, which are only a couple of hours old.
Of these, the Seth Myers segment A Closer Look remains the highlight. These political deep dives are heavily researched, hilarious and increasingly out of f**k's to give.
The latest one opened with Myers stating, "Donald Trump has always been a shameless liar," and a press conference bit earlier in the week saw him all but calling Trump a Nazi.
Next up is Stephen Colbert. His increasingly vitriolic monologues are a must watch. His Trump antagonism has steadily grown but Wednesday's monologue was the most angered I've seen him.
"Listen Up!" he bellowed, staring down the camera and calling out White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who had skipped answering press questions that afternoon. "You don't get to tag out here, SA-RAH. Because it's not really you up there, you're just Donald Trump's mouthpiece. Or whatever piece the lies come out of."
This monologue was titled, 'Now we know who's willing to defend caging children' and was about Trump's policy - not law, as he has repeatedly lied - of separating migrant families at America's borders.
This has been heavy on my mind because, as you've just read, my children are the exact same age as those being forcibly separated from their parents and put into what is being called 'Tender Age' camps. However the term 'baby prison' quickly took over as the popular description.
This is monstrous practice. No matter what side of politics you're on. Imagining my kids being led away, without documentation or any plan or method for later reunification, is horrifying. Any thoughts other than abject disgust and moral outrage at Trump's policy marks you as a garbage person.
Yesterday, Trump signed a bit of paper ending the policy he himself introduced and spent days arguing he was powerless to overturn. While it stops the immediate cruelty it creates future problems and holds no provision for reuniting the currently seized children to their parents, some of whom have already been deported back to their country of origin. The White House even spelled 'Separation' wrong in the title.
If it wasn't so horrific it'd be funny. A buffoonish President bumbling away, constantly making things worse for himself. But there's nothing funny about babies and toddlers being locked up in cages in converted warehouses.
These three-year-olds don't have fall down powers or stand up powers and no one there to pretend with them that they do. The babies have no one to shuffle excitedly to. They are too little to understand what is going on. Thinking about how frightened and confused they must be is just heartbreaking.
"Oh, you must love the Trump administration Stephen," Colbert mocked during his angered monologue, parroting the line political comedians hear a lot these days, before adding the kicker. "The sadness just writes itself."
