Advice for body builders

Cancel your gym membership; it is unnecessary. Return your Arnold Schwarzenegger body builder's bible (you know: the tome so mighty you need to be Mr Universe to be able to carry it home) to the bookshop whence it came; it is surplus to requirements. Dismiss your personal trainer; he or she is simply not needed. If you wish to beef up, all you require is a baby with a bit of gas in its tummy. I confess that there are times when I would be prepared to lend you mine for a couple of hours.

For although, on the whole, she is a calmer beast than her older sister, our beloved younger daughter's post-feed tantrums are like a good Arsenal counter attack: they develop quickly and result in a screamer. She can go from blissful gulping to lung-bursting wailing in seconds, and her lung capacity is matched only by the physical effort she demands from you, the pacifier, before she will abate. Several times each day she grants me this opportunity to tone muscles I didn't know I had.

Over the past five weeks my wife and I have developed various techniques which seem to hasten the placation. Their effectiveness is directly proportional to the effort required.

The classic rock

Basic cradling. Doesn't work in the slightest. Our daughter considers this an insult to her proud reputation, and as such will only raise the volume.

The fireman's lift

This is relatively easy, and until recently was quite effective. It entails hoisting my daughter on her front over my left shoulder and patting her firmly on the back with my right hand. Even in the glory days it would only work when accompanied by a rigorous number of laps of our living room. My wife used to refer to it as "Daddy magic" until it abruptly ceased to have any effect two days ago.

The ski Sunday

At least I get to sit down for this one. But that's as good as it gets. It involves holding her, facing me, on my knees and both of us swaying in tandem from side to side, as if slaloming quite awkwardly down the slopes of an Alp. In a chair. Um. It doesn't really have anything to do with skiing. I'm making up the names for these things as I go. This is also much less effective than it used to be.

The up and down

Holding my daughter under the armpits in front of me, and simply lifting her slowly up and down. This is really hard work. If you don't believe me, try it yourself with something that weighs about 14lb, or even with a child if you can legally obtain one. I usually can't last more than about thirty 'reps' (as I believe strong people call them) and I'm quite proud of that. But the trouble with this method is that it suppresses the screams only until the precise moment when your arms can take no more.

The indecisive croucher

This is when I hold my daughter out in front of me, one arm around her waist and one supporting her head (but leaning back, as is her wont, and as it inconveniently was when she was born), and bend at the knees (my knees), holding this position for a moment before standing again, and repeating until the screaming stops. This sounds simple enough, but an awful lot of repeating is usually required. And the longer this trial of endurance continues, the more the pain increases. I'm getting thighs like tree trunks. Seriously: I'll be in Roberto Carlos territory before long. But persevere through the burn and tranquility is often eventually restored.

The Status Quo

The current favourite. Similar to the indecisive croucher, but with added back and forth motion. Picture an ageing guitarist, too slow and tired to attempt star jumps, and settling instead for this deceptively strenuous activity. I discovered the efficacy of this technique only yesterday and was happy to make good, prolonged use of it, until I found that I could barely stand as soon as I stopped.

I don't remember it being this much hard work the first time around. If I'd put in this much effort, I'd have spent the intervening months painting myself orange and entering contests in Las Vegas. Or whatever it is that muscly people do.

In other pacification news, the eponymous anti-hero of our older daughter's placatory animation of choice - the gruffalo - has officially now made the transition from scary to hilarious in her eyes. When he made his appearance in her 467th viewing this evening, her surprising response was hysterical laughter. We seem to have desensitized her to fear.

Just in time for Halloween.

Four hands are better than two.

Tomorrow I return to work after my paternity leave/holiday combo. I am less than jubilant about this, as is my wife. I have tried to convince her that my contribution to keeping our two young ladies in check is really negligible, therefore my impending absence for forty hours a week should pose little threat to her sanity. One could even argue that she will now in fact have one less child to supervise.

My case was undermined last Friday night, however, when I was granted special dispensation to make a foray into Big London City to have a rare night of fun with my friends. Of course, these people are also my wife's friends, so I was extremely appreciative of her brave sacrifice in staying at home with the girls so that I could be the social representative for both of us. This appreciation became tinged with guilt when I heard my wife's anguished description of the nightmare that had been bath time that evening. Imagine the popular redneck refrain Duelling Banjos, but with the twangy instruments replaced by screams which escalate in almost endless competition with each other. So more Dante than Deliverance, I suppose. This was a harrowing experience for my wife to endure unassisted and her sense of trepidation has only increased as a result. At least nobody had to squeal like a pig.

So the relative serenity of having one parent per child on a full-time basis is now at an end. The difficulties we have for the past month overcome together will now be doubled. How, for example, will my wife transfer both children upstairs on her own? Daughter A can make this journey under her own steam, but must be carefully overseen at close proximity. Daughter B is unable to move anywhere under her own steam, and must therefore be carried. Each activity requires two arms. They must occur concurrently. My wife does not have four arms. As such she will be left with a choice between abandoning one child's safety to the hands of fate or not doing a wee all day.

Some mornings I get up at 6:00 for work. I will now be compelled to get everyone else up at the same time (bearing in mind that my wife and younger daughter are people for whom sleep is currently at a premium) so that I can assist with the washing, nappy changing, dressing and feeding of others before I depart. The alternative will be to eat my bowl of Krave and do my morning poo in absolute silence before sneaking away and leaving my wife to deal with the getting up of the girls by herself. Again, there seems to be no desirable option here.

Similar logistical nightmares will apply to preparing meals, leaving the house, appeasing the wounded, entertaining the restless, and pretty much every activity that takes place in the course of an average parental day. All require disagreeable compromise when there are more children than parents on hand. And these are just the examples we can think of now. If only I didn't have to go to work.

We have started buying lottery tickets.

Oh dear

When I was born, I am reliably informed, my sister (who at the time was two years and twelve days old) suddenly developed a limp. On the whole she took to her little brother reasonably well. I'm still here to tell you about it, after all. But she persisted for some time with this limp.

It's an attention thing, you see.

We've been wondering what our older daughter's equivalent of the limp would be in response to the birth of her own younger sibling. In general she has adjusted to the change in circumstances with a maturity and grace which has surpassed my wildest expectations, and which belies her tender age. I have to keep reminding myself that she is only 19 months old.

Each time she sees the little person who keeps distracting Mummy and Daddy, she continues to gleefully exclaim "It's a baby!" When she can't locate her sister, she enquires "Baby, where are you?" Most adorably of all, she insists on showering her with gentle stroking, kisses and, more recently, loving hugs. Only this evening she took it upon herself to curl up on the sofa with Mummy and baby and I cried with joy a little bit.

But mature, graceful and adorable though she may be, she would be abnormal if she displayed no reaction at all to the small reduction in the amount of time her audience devotes to her. A few signs of this reaction have begun to leak out, each one a contender to become The Limp.

Screaming

This was the first indication of insecurity in our eldest, having begun almost as soon as our youngest arrived home. It is also by far the most troublesome, so mercifully it seems to have subsided. Although these assaults on the ear drums usually take the form of happy squeals, I would much prefer a nice, quiet smile.

Having a lie down

I'm not sure if this counts because I think it may have started when she was still an only child. But it's all been a bit of a blur really, so I can't be certain. Occasionally, when something perturbs her, she will simply throw herself onto her bum and then onto her back, before staring with relative serenity at the ceiling/sky/whatever's up there, until someone demonstrates concern.

I actually quite like this idiosyncratic little piece of behaviour, in the same way that one might secretly admire a man in strange shoes, for just being unpretentiously odd enough to pull it off.

Fake choking

This is a bad one. Occasionally, like anyone, she will have a drink and allow a bit to go down the wrong hole. Much coughing, spluttering and alarm will duly follow. A few days ago one such incident occurred and we could metaphorically see the proverbial penny dropping as she was instantly surrounded by worried adults anxious to establish her wellbeing.

Ever since this moment, we have become increasingly reluctant to leave her alone with a drink, having watched her rapidly perfect a very convincing cough and splutter, invariably accompanied by a martyr's assertion that she's OK. As recommended by all the experts, we resist rewarding this attention-seeking behaviour with attention. However, this approach exposes us to a perilous Boy Who Cried Wolf style crisis. Thus I hope to see a swift end to this particular habit.

Oh dear

This is the contender which I think, sadly, may abide to become our older daughter's Limp. At first it was extremely endearing to hear her adopt my own simple phrase in response to misfortune: "Oh dear." By day two of this my delight had begun to give way to a weary hope that she may soon grow as tired of those two words as we had, after hearing her repeat them ad infinitum. By day three, she had progressed to creating problems of her own - engineering a carefully controlled fall, or 'dropping' her lunch on the floor - in order to generate a reason to say the magic words. Now she cannot resist saying them even before she has contrived a cue for doing so.

I pointed out to her today, after one such gambit, that the sincerity of her regret was called into question by its being expressed before its cause had taken place. She neglected to invoke in response the recent discovery that neutrinos can travel faster than the speed of light and that - by implication - cause can in fact follow effect (this would have really impressed me), and instead played the only-19-months-old card; feigning incomprehension and, consequently, innocence.

In the face of this belligerence, I fear that we may be stuck with these two words. The worst thing is that I was the source.

Oh dear.