I am a dad. If I were a woman, I’d be a mum. But I’m not.
> Are we too creating worlds of words that will one day cause more heartache than the joy we now feel? By putting our children on a stage viewed by an endless audience are we providing the fodder of therapy sessions and acts of rebellion?
Thoughts on blogging about your offspring, from Dadcentric – “The House At Blog Corner“
He is still at the crawling stage (he stands, and very occasionally takes a step or two, but crawling is still his primary means of transportation). No terrain is too challenging for him – he can crawl up and down stairs, he can climb down from sofas and beds, and I’ve even seen him climbing onto the sofa once or twice. He also climbs out of the front door if you leave it open.
He’s aware that to climb down from something, you need to do it backwards. So he’ll turn round and reverse into position. Sometimes, he gets into reverse a little early. So you’ll see him crawling backwards across the sitting room towards an open front door that’s about twelve feet away. This gives you plenty of time to close the front door, before tousling his hair and saying “You are so *cute!*”
Another cute thing that he will do is to bring me a book, and then climb up onto my knee to read it with me. Rarely do we read the entire book – generally, he cherry-picks a page or two, and then goes off to find another book or do something else entirely.
This story is disgusting and should only be read by those who have nerves of steel.
There is no exact right time to start toilet training. 12 months is almost certainly too early, but Karen and I figured that there’s no harm in assembling Bernard’s awesome Seat-A-Kid and plonking it on him every now and then.
This morning, I was changing his nappy, and put him down on it for a few seconds. He looked at me, smiled briefly, and then attempted to dismount.
However, his dismount was clumsy, and the yellow insert (see the picture in the link above) was flipped through the air behind him, spraying a quantity of urine all over the carpet.
“Hooray, I think!” I called, gave him a brief smattering of applause to show my approval, then grabbed a couple of flannels to sop up his little puddle.
This task completed, I rushed through to the bedroom to awake Karen, who was in the middle of a totally pointless nap that would be ten minutes long, at most, as it was nearly breakfast time. I told her the story, and she shared my enthusiasm.
Bernard was excited too. So much so, that he had another wee, and I grabbed three more flannels and a change of clothing.
On Thursday, I was pushing Bernard around the supermarket, as I do. We reached the last aisle, where I saw a display of cheap toy cars – 69p each, or 2 for £1. A huge “3+” emblem in the corner of the box made it clear that these were not going to be suitable for Bernard for nearly 2 more years.
“Well, baby, ” I said, “I’ll buy a couple and then look after them for you.”
And now, I hold my red 1/56 Honda S2000 and my yellow 1/57 VW Golf ((yes, the different scales do mean that the Golf looks awkwardly small and the S2000 looks awkwardly large)) in my hands, and think “By golly, these feel good.”
Toy cars. Where have I been all these years? I’ve been in a wilderness for the last decade or two, but I have returned.
Here, do yourself a favour. This weekend, buy yourself a toy car. You’ll feel fantastic.
*UPDATE: I’ve taught Bernard to push the cars around on the floor and make vrooming noises. Karen is most impressed. Truth be told, so am I. Vroooom!*
My son asked me to help him record a song that he’s been working on. I’ve put it up here for you to listen to.
The song launches instantly into a dynamic and rhythmic first movement, with an up-beat tempo and airy feel. The listener is then startled when the music suddenly ceases, and is replaced by a very short, but very profound, acappella passage.
The artist can then briefly be heard adjusting his position in the studio. The second movement comes in at about 34 seconds, and it is an altogether much darker affair. It is a veritable assault on the ears, and contrasts superbly with the poppiness of the first movement. The lyrics here are much more sinister, chilling in what they don’t say, almost as much as what they do.
The artist is clearly exhausted, and spends the subsequent 40 seconds regaining his composure, while remarking on the quality of the coffee.
The third movement begins at exactly 1:29, and indicates the artist retreating into his shell, musing on his purpose and offering deep philosophical questions to the listener. It is by far the longest movement of the piece, and it tapers off gradually, in anticipation of the superb fourth, penultimate, movement.
The fourth movement, at about 2:25, is unlike anything that this reviewer has ever heard before in his life. Consisting of just the same note played three times, each time quieter than the last, it symbolises mankind’s lack of faith in his own judgement, gradually becoming less and less confident of his decisions as time goes by. Remarkable.
More studio noise, and then the final movement at 2:58. This movement is presented in a minor key, I think. By now, the artist’s exuberance has caused the guitar to go completely out of tune. Which says it all.
If I had to use one word to describe this piece? Majestimospheric.
(mp3 no longer online – email me if you are interested)
With teeth, comes dental hygiene.
Bernard loves having his teeth brushed. This procedure consists of me placing a tiny molecule of toothpaste onto his miniscule toothbrush, and then sticking it in his mouth and attempting to brush his lower front teeth (which are the only teeth visible, at present). I listen carefully for that lovely sound, oh it’s one of the loveliest sounds in the world, I think, the sound of teeth being brushed. That sound means that I’m brushing teeth, and not just tongue.
Bernard, meanwhile, is co-operative in many ways, but not in others. Like my late cat, Chippy, he loves the taste of toothpaste, and attempts to devour it. The upside of this is that he allows the toothbrush in his mouth. The downside is that, to him, eating toothpaste is the priority, so his actions are not geared towards the brushing action, and often go directly against it.
He also makes cute burbling sounds and allows foamy toothpaste to dribble out of his mouth like a cross between a rabid dog and a volcano.
The baby has tonsillitis!
This comes as a great shock to me. I’ve had tonsillitis before, and Bernard seems to be coping with it much better than I ever did. I have two choices: either refuse to accept that the doctor’s diagnosis is correct, or accept the fact that I am a big soft wuss and my baby has his shit together.
Upon unwrapping a pongsome nappy, we discover that my baby does, indeed, have his shit together, and I need no longer ask these questions.
The baby looks at me with clear self-superiority in his eyes, and I continue.
Every week I enjoy my Thursdays with Bernard more and more. I suppose this is for two reasons – firstly, because every week I realise more and more that this is something to be enjoyed, something to be appreciated, something that I won’t always have, something that I want to be able to look back on and think “Yes, I made the most of that while I had it.” Secondly, because with every week that passes, I allow the rest of my life to fall apart a little more so that I can restructure it around him.
That’s not entirely true. Karen and I maintain a list of things that need doing around the house, and yesterday I decided that it just wasn’t thorough enough – there were a lot of things still in my head that I hadn’t written down, so I put down everything that I can think of. We also restructured the list, to make it simpler. Instead of having eight or so categories, we now just have four lists: two for Karen, two for me. Each of us has a list of high priority items, and a list of low priority items. Initially I thought that such a simple prioritisation system wouldn’t give us the power that we needed, but looking at the new lists, I’m convinced.
Back to my original train of thought, and the previous paragraph. What I was trying to suggest was that in life, I have room for five basic things:
* Work
* Sleep
* Things that have to be done
* Time for me
* Time for the family
Parenthood has drastically fattened the fifth. Home ownership has drastically fattened the third. So everything else has been forced to slim down, and none more so than the fourth.
Okay, so admittedly tonight I’m going into London to drink to the health of Dr. Sloan ((yes, the site is no longer updated, but I’m linking it anyway because it’s brilliant)). And last night, after everyone else had gone to bed, I watched Big Nothing (decent entertainment, but not what you’d call A Brilliant Film with the capital letters). But these are relatively isolated incidents – for most of the last two weeks, I’ve been finding myself so tired out by 10pm that I’ve had to forego my day’s quota of self-time entirely.
I think that part of the key to being a parent is learning to accept this. The baby depends on you. Your partner depends on you more than ever before. First and foremost, you’ve got to look after these people. And if you’ve got some time left over for yourself at the end of it, then that’s a bonus. And if you’ve also got the energy to do something worthwhile with it, then you’re a luckier man than I.
Returning home after 5 days visiting family, Bernard is reimplanted into his natural environment (ie our living room) and I can at last see how quickly he is developing. Five days ago, if I planted him on the sitting room floor, I was able to coax him into crawling a few paces by constructing a precarious tower of blocks and saying to him “now, don’t demolish that.”
But now, he is flying across the room, cuddling the door (he is strangely fond of doors). A springing noise causes me to raise my head, and I realise that he has figured out how to open my CD box (better find the keys for that). He paws at the glass panel on the (long since childproofed) TV unit, trying to reach the LCD displays behind it. He pulls himself up to a stable kneeling position on the edge of the coffee table, increasing his vertical range by a foot or two. A whole slew of areas just got added to the “to-clear” list. He attempts to manually fillet a small book of Oscar Wilde quotes (which were deliberately placed in his reach for this purpose).
This is all very, very brilliant.