IT'S NOT A COMPETITION

Our youngest daughter last week reached the grand old age of one. The mathematical implications of this are literally severalfold. She is now a year older than she was, not to mention only one year younger than her sister. She is eligible to play with toys which enthusiastically state "12 months +!!!" on the box. (Actually I've never seen one with exclamation marks, but they're definitely implied.) Don't tell anyone, but she has in fact dabbled with such toys before. The difference is that she can now do so with a clear conscience, because overnight her throat rapidly expanded to allow the safe swallowing of small pieces of plastic. Similarly, she has developed a sudden tolerance to medicines and must now consume double the amount to achieve the same effect.

Just sixteen years remain until she can learn to drive. We're already behind on our savings for the lessons. In seventeen years she can begin to absolutely never, ever drink or smoke. Best of all, our daughter is one percent of the way to her letter from the grandchild of Wills and Kate. I wonder if monarchs will still write letters in 2111. I wonder if taxpayers will still fund the extravagant lifestyles of arbitrarily determined families in supposedly democratic societies in 2111.

Anyway, controversial cynicism aside, I can't help but use this landmark as a point at which to compare and contrast the progress made by each of my daughters. I am, of course, very clear that IT IS NOT A COMPETITION, but I think it's natural to find interesting the different routes their respective journeys have taken.

The most obvious comparison involves a notable skill our youngest daughter has just mastered: walking. She is now fully bipedal. For a couple of weeks she had Theo Walcott Shooting Syndrome (TWSS): she could only do it when she wasn't thinking about it, or when she was confident that nobody was looking. But, aged one year and two days, she decided it was time to go public and spent the day toddling between different people and pieces of furniture. With each such venture her confidence visibly grew; now she is ready to give lessons in perambulation to other babies. From memory, her big sister reached the TWSS stage at roughly the same age, but it lasted much longer. She broke through the barrier at about fifteen months, so if it was a competition, WHICH IT IS NOT, then that would be 1-0 to the young pretender. This is commonly held to be normal amongst younger siblings; they have the advantage of daily demonstrations by their elders from which to learn.

The scores, WHICH WE ARE NOT KEEPING, are drawn level by the other obvious development: talking. Although not what one might call fluent, our eldest had mastered a few phrases not long after her first birthday. Daughter 2.0 will have to accelerate somewhat to meet this target. Her noises are definitely becoming more varied and discernible from one another, but none of them could yet qualify as words. Laughter, on the other hand, is to her what the word 'snow' reputedly is to eskimos. She has a complex and useful system of variations upon the theme of mirth, each more delightful than the last. Who needs English when you can communicate all of your needs by adorable chuckling? Still: 1-1.

In order to prompt other interesting comparisons, I have just re-read the blog post I wrote upon the occasion of our first daughter's first birthday, some nineteen months ago. What I learned was this: I was really self-involved nineteen months ago.

It was all about me. I barely mentioned the progeny at all. Shameful, really. In my defence, I did - in the course of discussing myself at such length - describe myself as vain. Furthermore, though, I proposed that fatherhood doesn't really change one's characteristics. Well, the evidence nineteen months on begs to differ. I have today managed five paragraphs - many of them featuring more than two sentences - before talking about me. So perhaps parenthood has changed me. I am now, clearly, not even remotely self-obsessed.

In paradoxical summary then: parenthood has made me less inclined to make the subject of parenthood all about me. I suppose I'll need a few more years of it before I become fully modest. Watch this space.

The story of the little infection that didn't know when to go away and leave us all alone.

Apologies, oh legion of readers, for the delay in bringing to you this latest installment of amateurish, self-interested, baby-related philosophising. The past month has been - if not traumatic - then at least trying for me and, probably to a greater extent, for my wife (I am still to decide whether the disproportionate burden-bearing on the mother's part is a product of nature, a society which is still more misogynistic than we care to admit, or simply my instinctive tendency for evasive apathy. But this is a debate for another day). Most of all, this has been a hard time for our daughter.

Since you last heard from me, she has suffered a continuous series of persistent, albeit non life-threatening ailments. There have also been notable triumphs, more of which later. Bad news first.

One development which, I suppose, falls under the headings of both pain and progress, has been the notorious ordeal that is teething. One of our daughter's middle bottom ones (Like many otherwise reasonable people I'm no great fan of dentistry or its practitioners, and am thus unaware of technical tooth terms) was the first of many candidates to make the breakthrough a few weeks ago. The legendary distress caused by this is, it turns out, of the kind that has to be witnessed first hand to be truly appreciated.

Relentless screaming for two solid days.

And if there's one thing the past month has taught us, it's that our daughter is a trooper. When she fulfills my vicarious prophecy of becoming a professional footballer, she will be the one who pioneers not diving and rolling about like a cheating coward. When our daughter screams, it really hurts. My advice is to use Anbesol and Nurofen, and to have an amazingly patient wife. Still: only nineteen teeth to go. And I could never have predicted the magnitude of the paternal pride evoked by the merest glimpse of the little flash of white in her smile.

But all this has been no more than a distraction from the real ailments. Shortly after having her last jabs about a month ago, our daughter's right ear began to extrude a worrying volume of waxy gunky gunkwax. Also, we observed, it smelt like a dirty bin. After allowing a day to establish that these symptoms were not likely to eradicate themselves, we made the first of many subsequent trips to the doctor, who swiftly confirmed our suspicion that our daughter was suffering from her first ear infection. This was to be tackled by her first course of antibiotics.

To cut a long story short, four further consultations with irritatingly alternating doctors, and four courses of antibiotics, and now one of ear drops, are yet to vanquish this infection. Initially its symptoms consisted of more screaming, as well as frenzied rubbing of the offending ear which often nearly amounted to its removal. The sleep patterns which were previously just starting to emerge were immediately abandoned in favour of not really ever sleeping at all.

Mercifully, these symptoms have largely subsided in spite of the infection's stubborn refusal to do so itself. However, multiple courses of medicine have caused their own problems. All of these events have transpired, I suspect, to make me grateful for having learnt as a child to spell diarrhoea (If you think I've spelt it wrong, then go and live in America). In addition to the gushing poo (accompanied by stomach cramps and what my wife affectionately refers to as "sore undercarriage"), this medical onslaught may or may not have been responsible for the eye infection which our daughter has now also developed. So her five month old body is currently being bombarded with antibiotics, ear drops and eye drops, each three or four times every day.

One could argue that it's best to get it all out of the way at once, a bit like having twins. Except of course that these maladies are not finite: the chances of their recurrence are unaffected by any previous suffering. And the difficulty we have discovered is that, when your child is suffering in several simultaneous ways - and has yet to learn any of the languages that you speak - it's very difficult to work out what the problem is and how to solve it. I think the doctors have the same trouble.

In spite of all this, I have been genuinely amazed at our daughter's resilience. Of course I am aware that many children and their parents suffer far, far worse, and I am eternally grateful for every healthy aspect of my daughter's physiology. But nevertheless, she has put up with an awful lot recently, and still found time for plenty of happiness and achievement.

Between all the screaming and discomfort, our daughter has discovered and perfected the art of rolling over. Once agin I am overcome with pride as she thrusts her weight determinedly to her right, always bravely confronting the struggle at the last with the inconvenient obstacle caused by her right shoulder. More often than not now, her momentum is sufficiently judged to overcome this hurdle, leaving her lying satisfied on her front as she raises her head to meet you with a look of triumphant glee, another epic undertaking complete. She also sat up unassisted for a good ten seconds the other day. However her failure to repeat this feat has led us to reluctantly conclude that it was a fluke.

Her co-ordination in general is rapidly improving. She can remove my glasses at will in one swiftly executed movement. This might be more irritating than impressive if she didn't always agree to give them straight back. And her ability to harvest huge clumps of my chest hair will no doubt ensure my qualification as a metrosexual before the year is out.

This co-ordination has also helped with her burgeoning talent for eating solid food. She now knows more-or-less how and when to open, close, chew and swallow. And then dribble and smear. Maybe there is room for improvement, but I think weaning will soon be feasible.

I commented to someone the other day (during one of those mutually smug "Oh yes, I also am a father, aren't we excellent" chats to which I am now privy) that the second two months of fatherhood were much easier than the first two. Well, the fifth has been the hardest yet. But also the most rewarding.