Watching strange things on the telly: a perk of having children.

I like to think of myself as the sort of person who's much too busy being all cultural to watch television.

But it's not true.

Having a baby can restrict one's social life somewhat, so - apart from reading or the odd game of scrabble - evening entertainment for my wife and I does tend to quite often involve the magic picture box in the corner. Of course we are quite discerning, carefully selecting only the most authentic and insightful drama for our perusal. Oh, and I'll watch any sport whatsoever. Latvian tiddlywinks championships? That'll do.

So it was inevitable that our daughter would develop her own taste for telly, and I have monitored her preferences with great interest. She seems to consistently favour two programmes in particular.

The first of these is a popular choice amongst her generation: In the Night Garden. I must confess to being a novice in this area, but I have seen enough to become vaguely familiar with some of the finer points. Please accept my apologies, however, for any inaccuracies in the interpretation that follows.

The opening credits are powerfully hypnotic, largely due to their painstaking stop-motion animation. Something (whose exact nature I can't quite recall) is in a boat, in the sea, at night. Then the camera pans up to the sky, whose stars mutate dreamily into beautiful white flowers which multiply to fill the screen before parting to reveal a forest which, by this point in proceedings, I am compelled to describe as magical. Then it gets really trippy.

We've all heard the rumours about The Magic Roundabout having been conceived by some Belgians off their Flemish faces on LSD. It's hard to imagine In the Night Garden having anything other than a very similar genesis. I'm reliably informed that each episode begins with a Matrix red pill/blue pill style, fate-defining cliffhanger, which revolves around a choice between two modes of transport to the night garden. The ninky-nonk - some sort of early Persian circus themed train - is my daughter's favourite option. I am yet to experience the pleasure of the other possibility, but I gather that its name is something which rhymes with ninky-nonk. I'm not sure where the tension comes from.

Once this difficult decision has been made, we are introduced to the characters who inhabit the night garden. My personal favourite is the one with a funny shaped head who lives in a cave and collects rocks, in order to pursue his hobby of cleaning rocks. I can't remember his name. Sorry. There are also some very small creatures. I wasn't really paying much attention to them. Then there's Oopsy Daisy, an endearing young lady who falls over a lot, which ties in conveniently with her name and catchphrase (which is the same as her name).

But the hero of the piece is undoubtedly Iggle Piggle. Our daughter loves Iggle Piggle. Now, I don't wish to offend, but there's no getting away from the fact that Iggle Piggle looks quite phallic. This must have been deliberate. This chap's appearance represents the subversive legacy of a Belgian drug dealer's contribution to children's TV. He's got a really good song though. He sings it a lot.

These characters basically do some stuff that they always do, and then it's all repeated in rudimentary animated form. We don't usually bother with that bit. But I can definitely see the appeal of In the Night Garden. It's mental, but in an overwhelmingly cosy way.

The same cannot be said of the other show that holds our daughter's rapt attention in all circumstances: The Weakest Link. I'm sure there's no need for me to offer much description of this. People clearly selected precisely for their ignorance fail to answer insultingly easy questions, all of which serves only to provide a platform for an old witch to sneer cheap insults at them. And they're all delighted that this is happening. So is our daughter.

But what really irritates me about this bullying based quiz is the determination of the writers to have Anne Robinson introduce each question under a very specific category. So a poser about, I don't know, tomato ketchup would begin "In ketchups..." I think we're supposed to assume that this one question has been drawn from a vast bank of ketchup trivia at the fingertips of Ms. Robinson. Which seems unlikely to me. Hopefully our daughter will grow out of The Weakest Link.

But not In the Night Garden.

Egg related morning of terror.

Our daughter's diet is at least as varied as my own these days. Indeed, sometimes more ingredients are crowbarred together in one of her meals than I manage in an average week. But she seems to enjoy most of the ridiculous parsnip, prune and peach melba type combinations with which we experiment on her palette.

So, being a man who loves a good egg, I was overjoyed one recent morning when my wife suggested scrambling some for the three of us for breakfast. Sharing the meal with our daughter meant sacrificing salt and pepper from the recipe, but we agreed that this was a worthy forfeit to pay for the honour of enjoying such a hallowed culinary experience with our offspring.

She didn't really like it.

As I swallowed my disappointment at my daughter's failure to do the same with her eggs, she chose instead to carefully spread the remainder all over her face. This is a common response of hers to any reluctance to eat something, so we let her get on with it.

Within five or ten minutes, though, an alarming redness started to appear on her face, wherever the egg had been rubbed. At first I remained nonchalantly calm; confident that this merited less worry than finishing my coffee. But my wife's greater concern soon seemed justified, as the redness rapidly grew more angry, and was joined by some frightening blotchy-welty-rashiness. It was as if our daughter had developed years' worth of very severe eczema in a few minutes.

In what seemed at the time like the most sensible option, we bathed the patient immediately; vigorously and repeatedly soaping the affected areas. Even as we did so, these areas were multiplying, appearing all over her body - including in places where no egg to skin contact had been made. This development was the one which saw my panic level catch up with my wife's. I clearly don't know as much as I should about allergies, but suddenly horrific visions of closing airways and blue faces crept ominously across my mind. This could end badly.

Our next step was to decide between spending Sunday in the waiting room of A&E and phoning NHS Direct. Mercifully, there was still no sign of our daughter experiencing any respiratory difficulties, so we chose the phone option. The nice lady on the other end reassuringly established that our daughter was indeed still breathing quite happily before promising that a nurse with an equally calming demeanour would phone us back within half an hour.

By the time the nurse did get in touch, the initial blotches were beginning to subside, so her soothing Bristolian tones served more as confirmation than revelation of our daughter's immediate recovery. She explained that egg allergies are fairly common in babies and toddlers, and are usually grown out of. Serenity was thus soon restored. We were, nevertheless, left with instructions to steer our daughter well clear of all edible ova for the foreseeable future, as well as a mild, confused sheepishness caused by the fuss we had made, tempered only by relief that it had ultimately been unnecessary.

My wife was still overcome with remorse for some time afterwards. I did my best to comfort her by pointing out that an incident such as this was the only way we could have discovered that it was a possibility. Personally I found this more confusing than comforting. I think I had stumbled upon a paradox.

But I digress. The whole episode underlined to me the tenuous fragility of a baby's life. Maybe our panic turned out to be disproportionate, but we were lucky. I wonder how many similar events end in a tragedy which no amount of love or care could have prevented. Obviously, as responsible parents, we will always take every conceivable measure to ensure our daughter's safety, but from now on I'm going to keep my fingers crossed as a backup.

Pride update.

As my daughter's age approaches the eight month mark, the list of her achievements and abilities continues to grow at an impressive rate. She now has four teeth, which seem to have emerged in no particular order. The symmetry I naively expected has failed to transpire, but this has had no effect on the efficient use she makes of her gnashers as she munches away on whichever concoction my wife and I subject them to. Not that much of it touches the sides, mind you, such is the voracity of her appetite. Root vegetables seem to be a common feature of her favourite meals, which I think indicates a certain cultured maturity in her taste.

Decision making seems to play in increasing role in other aspects of her life. Like any child, she is developing a strong sense of what she doesn't like, and how to express this. At high volume. What I find more admirable - and more positive - is her ability to discern what she does like. Holding her in front of her toy collection is all the invitation she needs to make a carefully considered selection. The repetition in her choices suggests that they are good ones. As a man often plagued by indecision I sincerely hope that this quality of my daughter's stays with her.

Her mobility is also improving. Although yet to fully master crawling, she does occasionally struggle forwards on her knees and elbows, even if she doesn't fully understand how she has achieved this. I am confident that, with each such happy accident, she is programming the instinct which will soon take over.

Crawling may, however, soon be rendered unnecessary. Her legs have been capable of supporting her weight since she was about five minutes old. She has now progressed to the point where a slight balance deficit is the only thing between her and independent perambulation. Thus, when you hold her hands, she walks eagerly in whichever direction she's facing, eating up the ground like Usain Bolt. And nothing makes her happier.

Convenient, then, that she has recently mastered a useful means of expressing this happiness: clapping. I say mastered. Maybe that's a bit generous. Picture a weightlifter who has put too much flour on his hands. The thing he or she would do to remedy such a situation is what my daughter does. Frequently. I should clarify that she is yet to attempt weightlifting. Although she is very strong.

We still haven't identified the language, but she can definitely talk. One of her preferred statements is "Dadadadadadadadada". My wife's interpretation of this differs from my own. While she sees it as a meaningless, albeit entertaining phonetic, I see no problem in isolating any two of its syllables to leave the word every father yearns to hear from his child. Yes folks: my daughter calls me Dada. Sometimes I'm even there when she does it.

All of these excellent capabilities, and yet she still almost never sleeps. At least not for any significant length of time. All I want for Christmas is eight solid hours. And my wife, as a light sleeper, and the one with all the milk (and, if I'm honest, our daughter's first choice of nocturnal visitor), suffers hugely more than I do. Just imagine how much amazing stuff our daughter could do after a good night's sleep.

Daddy dreams.

It was my birthday last week.

It's got a zero and a three in it.

While you calculate the permutations of that, I shall inform you that the celebrations on the day began with my daughter awakening me (with my wife's help), resplendent in her new Arsenal kit. This provided me with far more joy and pride than I could have predicted. Of course I have no intention of goonering her up for trips to Asda. In fact I'll try to minimise the pressure I will inevitably put on her to follow my allegiance as she grows up. I think that, in order for it to be genuine, one's choice of football team must be a personal decision, rather than an imposed one. A bit like religion really. Nevertheless, my red and white fingers are firmly crossed.

I have subsequently concluded that this start to my birthday was the manifestation of one of those slightly embarrassing, idealistic visions of parenthood that you don't even realise you're having. This epiphany has compelled me to search my subconscious for other examples, to accompany that of my first-born dressing up as Cesc Fabregas.

Some, I am sure, are common to most parents, and therefore easier to admit to. The first time she walks, her relieved smile at the end of her first day at school, graduation, wedding, etc etc. So far, so obvious.

I suppose my more bespoke reveries are really based on the hope that my daughter will be like me, and share some of my interests. Football is one of these. I also long for the day when we discuss our favourite books. Even heated debate on this subject will be welcome. I want to take her to art galleries and see her gasp in awe at the understated power of a Mondrian. I can't wait until the day she shoots me down with some carefully pitched sarcasm, or enjoys studying a map for a bit longer than necessary.

I should stress that, if my daughter is reading this in twenty years' time and feeling any regret at the non-occurrence of any of the above, then she absolutely shouldn't. I will be proud of whatever tastes, hobbies, achievements or idiosyncrasies she develops, as long as she takes unashamed pride in them.

And as long as she doesn't support Sp*rs.

Things I love about my daughter

My daughter is now six months, sixteen days and eleven hours old. What better way to mark the occasion than by outlining her most impressive and endearing characteristics?

So, in no particular order:

1. When she wakes up, invariably in a good mood, her beaming grin is often accompanied by an enthusiastic gargling noise, which emanates gleefully from the back of her throat. My best description of the sound is that it lies somewhere between the soothing white noise your television used to make in the good old days when BBC2 went to sleep, and the creaking inhalation made by the terrifying, inky mess confronted by Sarah Michelle Gellar in The Grudge (Incidentally, my wife has for years objected to my impersonation of this but, quite unfairly, is more than happy with our daughter's). Of course, these two references straddle quite a large expanse of middle ground. But rest assured that their audio average, as demonstrated by my daughter, is the sound of contagious joy personified.

2. She has a resilience which dwarves my own. Having spent a significant proportion of her existence fighting off one infection after another, she is now suffering from a particularly malicious cold, regrettably contracted from my wife (whose own resistance is similarly impressive). After spending yesterday evening being mildly amused by her own frequent sneezing, our daughter awoke not long into the night barely able to draw breath through the mucus which had suddenly plugged every sinus, and was embarking on an aggressive takeover of her throat. Fear, pain and panic caused howls of distress and streaming tears, as my wife and I struggled to pacify her. Ultimately we resorted to shutting the family in the bathroom with the shower turned up to eleven, in an attempt to exorcise the snotty demon with steam. Relative calm eventually ensued, but symptoms which would certainly keep me under the duvet have clearly persisted today. Yet my daughter has kept up her proverbial pecker, following with the usual tenacity her rigorous schedule of energetic banging, grabbing, sucking, pooing and grinning. Knowing the extent of her suffering, each burst of energy seemed like a stubborn little miracle.

3. She does an excellent poo. For the first five or so months of her life, I developed a naive assumption that my daughter would forever more only produce occasional bursts of pressurised orange liquid. On the contrary, of course, her introduction to solid food has heralded the dawning of a new era. And this era is brown, solid and regular. And it absolutely stinks. I am suitably proud.

4. The way she rolls. For a few weeks now, crawling has been only just eluding her. The will and the strength are there, but sadly the knees aren't. Once she overcomes this hurdle there'll be no stopping her, but in the meantime she compensates by rolling and spinning across the ground faster than I can run, and I was consistently the second fastest runner in my year at school. Until I started smoking. And drinking. How can I fail to be filled with pride at this display of physical prowess in my offspring?

5. She's very touchy-feely. This manifests itself in various ways, some more violent than others, but all equally charming. She demonstrates her affection for someone by slapping them swiftly in the face. And she's got a good arm on her. Furthermore, the slap often coincides with a scratch, but we consider this our punishment for not cutting her fingernails every five minutes, and thus love her all the more for it. She means well. In her less energetic moments, her favoured conditions in which to fall asleep involve being held in somebody's arms (preferably Mummy's), at just such a height that she can suck her thumb while simultaneously stroking their face with the fingers of the same hand. This is extremely adorable.

There are more than five things I love about my daughter. But that will do for now.

A bit self-indulgent and not as funny as usual but nevertheless very insightful.

I've recently been promoted at work.

Hurray. Go me, etc.

I'm not just showing off. As you might expect, this has brought with it more pressure and stress. I'm gradually getting used to these consequences of earning a bit more, and of being a little bit more proud of myself. But at first I really struggled to cope, as the added tension triggered some sort of depression in me and left me crying into my wife's arms and phoning my parents in the middle of their holiday to feel sorry for myself at them. I had a crisis of confidence which made me question my ability to do the job I had been given and, worst of all, to be a father. How could I fulfill my stereotypical role as protector, carer and role model when I had been reduced to a pathetic, quivering mess?

Believe it or not, I'm trying not to be melodramatic, and as I say, I'm adjusting to it all now with the help of those mentioned above as well as my colleagues, to all of whom I'm extremely grateful. But the experience has caused me to question where the balance should lie between being somebody you and your child can be proud of, and ensuring that you maintain a happy and stable demeanour.

My memories from my own childhood are of pride in my father's importance at work, and in his self-evidently hardworking nature, but also of worry at the obvious stress this caused him. Undoubtedly these memories have influenced my thinking in either direction. I'm sure most boys just want to impress their dad deep down. Mine made no attempt to disguise his joy when I told him of my promotion, and I think this was a factor in my applying for it in the first place. Yet I had decided long ago that I considered happiness to be far more important than wealth or status. So why the change of heart?

Of course, as a parent, it would be irresponsible of me to refuse a chance to earn a few more pennies for the family coffers, but I think pride was a bigger factor. I'm ashamed to say it, but I didn't like the idea of telling my daughter that I work in a shop. Now at least I can say that I'm a vaguely important person in a shop. To reiterate, I'm ashamed to confess to this feeling, but the lesson I'm learning here is that the responsibilities of parenthood force you to confront your ideologies. I'm still of the opinion that happiness is better than wealth or importance, but I no longer always feel that my opinions should come first.

So the balance has shifted, whether I wanted it to or not, but I'm also learning that you can still have it both ways. I come home from work a bit more stressed than I used to, but it is precisely by then being the best father I can that I can overcome the tension and the worry. It's a bit harder, but that's why getting the balance right is the real source of pride. Tellingly, it was the same stressed father of my childhood who used his experience to help me through my own little episode. Thus it all falls into place, and it turns out that everything's OK after all.

Hurray. Go me, etc.

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.