The Sweetwaters in England: Pip's Activity (or nativity as it's more commonly known)

December rolls round again and so too does Mama's favourite part of the year: the nativities.

This year, Pip was cast as an Angel in his nursery nativity (or activity as he insists on calling it). As Tigglets first equal opportunity Angel, he was required to wear a dress and tights. Enter Pip's new obsession: tights. Mama, not really wanting to splash out on tights, which seem ludicrously expensive to a mother of boys, decided to ask if we could borrow some from Ava. In hindsight, this was probably a mistake. Pip has a bit of a crush on Ava. She fits the bill for him nicely - pretty, blond and older than him. So because the tights were Ava's, tights were now the best thing since sliced bread.

When he was asked who he would like to be in the nativity, Pip's first answer was Cinderella. Mrs Head wisely said Cinderalla didn't feature heavily in Biblical Jerusalem, but would he like to be an Angel? And since Angel wear dresses and sparkly tinsel, that suited him just fine. He came home with his outfit for Mama to iron and promptly was consumed with rage when not allowed to wear the (white) dress 24/7 and to bed.

We had singing of the songs throughout the weeks leading up to the big day and many, many tantrums about his lack of tights. To the point where Mama was counting the days until the opening, and closing, performance.

We had six tickets so the entire Drinkwater family descended upon Tigglets and snagged the first row, which luckily turned out to be right in front of our own little Angel. Was he daunted by stage fright? Not in the slightest. He did what pretty much all toddlers in nativities countrywide do. Picked his nose, looked everywhere but at the desperately gesticulating teachers and then did what every parent dreads: showed the entire audience his knickers. Had Mama thought that he would be so excited to show us/everyone his tights I would have thought to put him in slightly more, um, neutral coloured pants. But I didn't, and the whole world now knows about his bright blue Bob the Builder pants.

The whole thing was absolutely adorable and the kids did so well. There was hardly a dry eye in the house. Every now and then, he still sings 'someone's coming, someone's coming/a baby boy, a baby boy/listen to the story/listen to the story/of great joy, of great joy' to the tune of Frere Jacques, just to show off.