6.41am I just had a dream about Sophia. I’m currently reading The Shack again, and in this book, a little girl gets kidnapped, and the story is all about her Dad’s relationship with God afterwards. I’ve just had a Shack-type dream about Sophia going missing. The adrenaline is still flowing and my heart is coming back to a normal beat. She’s here, she’s fine. But what a horrible feeling. I’m feeding Aidan which is helping my oxytocin to flow. Buy blimey. What a start to the day.

7.50am Mum has produced pancakes. All is well!

8.36am We’re ready to go! Only 36 minutes later than planned, not bad.

11.26am After what feels like a very long time, we have arrived at the Cathedral!

12.30pm After some terrible traffic, running out of petrol, stopping because Soph needed the toilet and Aidan crying for the last 20 minutes of the journey, we got to the Cathedral in time for communion, which was about quarter of an hour before the end. Even so, we still sang three hymns, had communion and said hello to lots of people. I always appreciate the space to just sit and worship at the beginning of what is always a big week.

1.50pm It’s an Easter tradition of ours to go out for lunch after the Chrism service. Up until this point, it’s just been just me and Nathan, but this year, we’ve taken Soph and Aidan too! We’ve come to an all you can eat buffet. Soph has loved the prawn crackers, sweetcorn soup, and ice cream. Aidan has had a go on a fish finger, several slices of cucumber, some chicken, and a spring roll. The salt and pepper hash browns were my favourite, and Nathan seems to have enjoyed the beef in black bean and the korma.

4.05pm After a long and fun day, we’re back at home. We’re all piled on the bed watching Bluey, enjoying being back together again. Nathan has got Compline this evening so we’ll do tea, bath and stories in a little while and I’ll be on bedtime duty.

5.20pm Nathan is outside chatting to a lady who needs some food. Soph wants to go too, but I think they probably need some space. I’ll go and crack on with tea.

7.50pm Sophia has 3 stories every night, followed by a chapter from her Toddler Bible, known in our house as ‘Jesus story’. She asked if she could read the Jesus story to herself tonight. Of course, I agreed. Listening to her ‘read’ (look at the pictures and try to remember what she’s heard before), I think she’s mixed up the story of the three little pigs and the wise man who built his house upon the rock.

She said; Jesus said ‘The man built his house out of sticks. And then a man came and knocked on the door and said ‘hello!’ Then it fell down!’. This amused me. She also thought that the picture of Abram and Sara was Mary and Joseph, which is an easy mistake to make.

8.46pm Both kids down! And Soph fell asleep on her own which, as long term readers will know, is very unusual!

10.15pm Nathan is back and we’ve straightened up the kitchen together. We had a good laugh and have come upstairs with cups of tea. Tomorrow, we’ve got a full day meeting. Nathan’s Mum and Dad are having Soph for the day, and we’re taking Aidan with us. We’ll take our playmat, a bag of toys and some snacks, and pass him between us and our colleagues. I think tomorrow definitely takes me over my allocated number of Keeping In Touch days, but that’s no surprise for a few reasons. The first is, it’s me and I like what I do. The second is that there’s a load of restructuring conversations going on at the moment, and it’s good to be involved in them. The third is that it’s church, it’s a vocation, and the boundaries are sometimes blurry!

Photo today is of the bottom of our pram which contains: a palm cross from yesterday, several different oil stocks and bottles from the Cathedral, some baby crisps and a clean reusable nappy which Sophia likes to put on her favourite dolly of the moment. This photo says it all!