It is 10:55pm and my one year-old daughter has just, finally, fallen asleep. I know with relative certainty that she will be awake again, screaming, within an hour or so, and also that there will be nothing that I can do to remedy this situation; that burden falls entirely upon my heroic* wife. I hasten to add that that this injustice is of our daughter's choosing, not my own. She will accept nothing but her mother's unconditional company for hours on end. Invariably we end up with her in our bed, where she prefers to lie horizontally, ensuring that my wife and I are left with an inch or two each in which to seek comfort and sleep in vain. I usually endure a lot of kicking as well. But at least the screaming stops.
She has never been a good sleeper, but the situation escalated a few weeks ago when, like just about everybody else in the country, we all contracted a nice bit of norovirus. Cue a few days of spectacularly horrendous vomiting, diarrhoea, headaches, stomach cramps and general near death experience. Our youngest appeared at first to have suffered slightly less than the rest of us. But her affliction soon developed into a succession of nasty colds, made all the worse by the relentless period of molar growth upon which her mouth decided to embark at the same time. All of this, coupled with her being at just the right age to develop some separation anxiety, would be enough to make anybody struggle with their slumber. For our daughter the increased sleeplessness became a habit and is now a pattern, to which we have had no choice but to resign ourselves.
When our older daughter went through a similar phase, we solved it (with what only now seems like relative ease) by following the textbook to the letter: letting her scream it out, before learning to get herself to sleep, free from dependency on any parent-shaped psychological crutches. This is not so easy the second time around, because we feel duty-bound to minimise the screaming of our youngest in the interests of our eldest (who is actually remarkably good at sleeping through all this). So, ultimately, we relent every night, despite knowing that this is really prolonging the problem.
Our latest tactic is to remove her dummy on the grounds that it exacerbates her aforementioned dependency on psychological crutches. I believe I have discussed previously the growing need to go cold turkey on the dummy anyway, and people who know about these things say that it can be surprisingly helpful in solving the sleep problem. So far it has merely meant that, when she inevitably did awaken, it took my wife longer than ever to becalm her. Eventually she brought the little insomniac downstairs, where of course she cut off any recriminations at the pass by slipping immediately into her extremely cute daytime persona. Despite my best efforts I was delighted - having only recently arrived home from work and missed bedtime - to spend some time with her. Nevertheless, I am preparing myself for another night of being kicked in bed by those cute little feet.
Having said that, it's now midnight and she's still asleep.
I really must go to bed.
*I read a passage of David Foster Wallace's semi-autobiographical novel The Pale King yesterday, in which the protagonist describes an inspirational lecture he heard as a student. In this speech, true heroism is defined as persistence in the mundane, uncelebrated commitment to the detail of their duties displayed by all the quietly diligent people of the world. Apply this to parenting instead of accountancy and my wife is the greatest hero of them all.
Wednesday, 19 December 2012
Wednesday, 28 November 2012
Slightly untoward
I was greeted, upon my return from work the other day, by the joyous news that our eldest daughter had observed to her mother that "Daddy has a sausage bum." I may have to start wearing pyjamas, although the damage is really done now, I suppose, if indeed it should be considered damage. My immediate reaction to my wife's tale of how she had proceeded to teach our daughter the words 'vagina' and 'penis' was to recoil slightly in middle class shock. Only slightly. This is slightly untoward, my instincts told me. Then I remembered about my liberal, open minded credentials and thought about it a bit more. It's no more naughty - or indeed less admirable - than a two year-old learning the words for arms, fingers, or small intestines. I quickly decided that I am proud of this development.
When she realised that I had been made aware of the leap in her anatomical knowledge, our daughter proudly listed all of our mutual acquaintances to me, noting in each case who had which. Most of them she got right. I expect this is how all the best surgeons start out.
This is just one example of the rapid changes in maturity recently displayed by both of our young ladies. Not all of them are as desirable as being able to identify the owners of willies. Twice in recent weeks, our eldest daughter has found it necessary to bite her little sister's hand. Quite hard. On each occasion she refused to apologise, giving us no choice but to invoke the Naughty Step. Except, in our slightly unprepared case, it was less of a step than a nice comfy sofa. Consequently, the threat of staying there until she said sorry was somewhat less than sufficient. Besides which, she's a stubborn one.
We recognised our duty as parents to make her fully aware of the seriousness of her offence, which meant that we had to shout at her a bit. It is unimaginably difficult to direct serious wrath at someone you love so much, even when the cause was her having inflicted pain upon someone else that you love equally hugely. In the end, you're left with the paradoxical motivation of shouting in the hope that it will prevent you from having to do so again. Complicated stuff, parenting.
The bitee, meanwhile, has been making her own steady progress through life. She now has at least one molar taking up room in the depths of her mouth, with more almost certainly imminent, judging by the amount of time she spends screaming rather than sleeping at night. The succession of nasty colds she has suffered has not helped, but the number of weeks since anyone in our house had a decent night's sleep is increasing beyond any sense of fairness.
As if by way of apology, she has also mastered the art of kissing. She does seem to favour the slightly awkward mouth open technique more often than not, but she knows what she's doing, and she enjoys it for the unpretentious display of affection it is. Besides kiss chase, her favourite game is very much hide and seek. And it's so easy to keep her happy playing this. I hid behind the same curtain at least a dozen times in quick succession the other day, but the unbridled glee on her face upon finding me each time was undiminished. I'll miss that when she develops a sense of repetition. It's quite a nice view out of that window. She has also become very adept at running away when she's been naughty, but it's one of those things that you forgive because it's so cute. Perhaps I should be worried that she has already learnt this technique of manipulation.
But my favourite, recent advance has undoubtedly been our two year-old's new ability to recognise, in written form, her own name and also, bizarrely, the word 'zoo.' I have chosen to overlook the fact that she insisted this morning that the word 'moo' was also pronounced 'zoo,' and remain immensely proud of her burgeoning literary skills. All the more so after I heard a father telling his daughter off in a bookshop the other day for liking books too much. "We're going to have to stop all this reading," he warned her in all seriousness. It was like witnessing a prequel to Fahrenheit 451.
Now that really is untoward.
When she realised that I had been made aware of the leap in her anatomical knowledge, our daughter proudly listed all of our mutual acquaintances to me, noting in each case who had which. Most of them she got right. I expect this is how all the best surgeons start out.
This is just one example of the rapid changes in maturity recently displayed by both of our young ladies. Not all of them are as desirable as being able to identify the owners of willies. Twice in recent weeks, our eldest daughter has found it necessary to bite her little sister's hand. Quite hard. On each occasion she refused to apologise, giving us no choice but to invoke the Naughty Step. Except, in our slightly unprepared case, it was less of a step than a nice comfy sofa. Consequently, the threat of staying there until she said sorry was somewhat less than sufficient. Besides which, she's a stubborn one.
We recognised our duty as parents to make her fully aware of the seriousness of her offence, which meant that we had to shout at her a bit. It is unimaginably difficult to direct serious wrath at someone you love so much, even when the cause was her having inflicted pain upon someone else that you love equally hugely. In the end, you're left with the paradoxical motivation of shouting in the hope that it will prevent you from having to do so again. Complicated stuff, parenting.
The bitee, meanwhile, has been making her own steady progress through life. She now has at least one molar taking up room in the depths of her mouth, with more almost certainly imminent, judging by the amount of time she spends screaming rather than sleeping at night. The succession of nasty colds she has suffered has not helped, but the number of weeks since anyone in our house had a decent night's sleep is increasing beyond any sense of fairness.
As if by way of apology, she has also mastered the art of kissing. She does seem to favour the slightly awkward mouth open technique more often than not, but she knows what she's doing, and she enjoys it for the unpretentious display of affection it is. Besides kiss chase, her favourite game is very much hide and seek. And it's so easy to keep her happy playing this. I hid behind the same curtain at least a dozen times in quick succession the other day, but the unbridled glee on her face upon finding me each time was undiminished. I'll miss that when she develops a sense of repetition. It's quite a nice view out of that window. She has also become very adept at running away when she's been naughty, but it's one of those things that you forgive because it's so cute. Perhaps I should be worried that she has already learnt this technique of manipulation.
But my favourite, recent advance has undoubtedly been our two year-old's new ability to recognise, in written form, her own name and also, bizarrely, the word 'zoo.' I have chosen to overlook the fact that she insisted this morning that the word 'moo' was also pronounced 'zoo,' and remain immensely proud of her burgeoning literary skills. All the more so after I heard a father telling his daughter off in a bookshop the other day for liking books too much. "We're going to have to stop all this reading," he warned her in all seriousness. It was like witnessing a prequel to Fahrenheit 451.
Now that really is untoward.
Wednesday, 14 November 2012
Getting piggy with it
Our eldest daughter's version:
This little piggy went to the market,
This little piggy went home,
This little piggy had nice beef,
This little piggy went numb,
This little piggy went weeeeeeeee all the way round.
Much better.
This little piggy went to the market,
This little piggy went home,
This little piggy had nice beef,
This little piggy went numb,
This little piggy went weeeeeeeee all the way round.
Much better.
Sunday, 21 October 2012
Dummies for dummies
Our eldest daughter never really got into dummies. She's always been a thumbsucker. Mercifully, it doesn't look like she'll be one of those who find the habit impossible to break in later life. I had a friend at secondary school who still found the temptation difficult to resist, even in that world of intense, adolescent, social stigma. I do not wish to imply that I thought any less of this person for the longevity of his habit but, on balance, I would prefer that our daughter doesn't have to even consider the risk of ridicule. So I am relieved that her opposable digit now goes between her dentures only when she is on the verge of sleep. We allow this on account of it being cute.
We did at one stage offer her a dummy, on one of the countless occasions when we had desperate need to quell a scream. It just didn't do it for her. In hindsight, this was an early example of her admirable capacity for independent decision making, my own, distinct lack of which capacity makes it all the more impressive to me. When we inevitably had similar cause to offer the same solution to our younger daughter, during one of her early, screamy outbursts, she quite understandably went the other way, decision-wise, and has been a strong advocate of the pacifying device ever since.
Please do not infer that I am against the use of dummies. Most parents will attest to their valuable practical applications (they make babies not scream. Sometimes) and our youngest in particular is similarly cute when sucking away on hers. Think Maggie Simpson, but less yellow. Where our eldest has always had an emotional need for her three soft puppy toys (or "puppies," as she sensibly calls them) in order to get to sleep or leave the house, our youngest relies for the same purposes on one of her collection of dummies. They are much easier to store and transport than puppies, inanimate or otherwise, but also easier to lose.
And our youngest facilitates this with an uncanny prowess in the art of dummy hiding. Like some sort of confidence trickster she'll perform her blink-and-you-miss-it feats of concealment, gleeful at the frustration of Mummy and Daddy as they resign themselves, from under the contorted and ultimately fruitless awkwardness of under the sofa or behind the radiator, to another visit to the dummy aisle at the supermarket. I briefly referred to myself in the third person there, in the middle of a quite complicated sentence. Sorry about that. We buy a lot of dummies because our daughter keeps hiding them, basically. Archaeologists of the future will marvel at the hundreds of children we will appear to have entertained here, when they find all the dummies we couldn't.
Until now, this alarming propensity to stow them away has been the only negative aspect of our daughter's dummy habit. But, since she turned one, it has begun to dawn on us that, like all habits, the problem of quitting it will soon loom large. But where to start? Each morning we promise ourselves that we will embark on the painful process of denying our daughter her dummy fix. Thus far, it has not worked. We have, in fact, somehow regressed to the point where her standard requirement is two at a time. She takes curious pleasure from holding the spare in her hand and switching them at ten second intervals. It is surprisingly entertaining to watch, to be fair, but does not represent the progress for which we hoped. There is a real danger that this could become an issue.
Maybe we'll have to go cold turkey. I'm going to give her a motivational speech about the time(s) I quit smoking. That's bound to do the trick.
Then we can start thinking about getting our eldest out of nappies.
We did at one stage offer her a dummy, on one of the countless occasions when we had desperate need to quell a scream. It just didn't do it for her. In hindsight, this was an early example of her admirable capacity for independent decision making, my own, distinct lack of which capacity makes it all the more impressive to me. When we inevitably had similar cause to offer the same solution to our younger daughter, during one of her early, screamy outbursts, she quite understandably went the other way, decision-wise, and has been a strong advocate of the pacifying device ever since.
Please do not infer that I am against the use of dummies. Most parents will attest to their valuable practical applications (they make babies not scream. Sometimes) and our youngest in particular is similarly cute when sucking away on hers. Think Maggie Simpson, but less yellow. Where our eldest has always had an emotional need for her three soft puppy toys (or "puppies," as she sensibly calls them) in order to get to sleep or leave the house, our youngest relies for the same purposes on one of her collection of dummies. They are much easier to store and transport than puppies, inanimate or otherwise, but also easier to lose.
And our youngest facilitates this with an uncanny prowess in the art of dummy hiding. Like some sort of confidence trickster she'll perform her blink-and-you-miss-it feats of concealment, gleeful at the frustration of Mummy and Daddy as they resign themselves, from under the contorted and ultimately fruitless awkwardness of under the sofa or behind the radiator, to another visit to the dummy aisle at the supermarket. I briefly referred to myself in the third person there, in the middle of a quite complicated sentence. Sorry about that. We buy a lot of dummies because our daughter keeps hiding them, basically. Archaeologists of the future will marvel at the hundreds of children we will appear to have entertained here, when they find all the dummies we couldn't.
Until now, this alarming propensity to stow them away has been the only negative aspect of our daughter's dummy habit. But, since she turned one, it has begun to dawn on us that, like all habits, the problem of quitting it will soon loom large. But where to start? Each morning we promise ourselves that we will embark on the painful process of denying our daughter her dummy fix. Thus far, it has not worked. We have, in fact, somehow regressed to the point where her standard requirement is two at a time. She takes curious pleasure from holding the spare in her hand and switching them at ten second intervals. It is surprisingly entertaining to watch, to be fair, but does not represent the progress for which we hoped. There is a real danger that this could become an issue.
Maybe we'll have to go cold turkey. I'm going to give her a motivational speech about the time(s) I quit smoking. That's bound to do the trick.
Then we can start thinking about getting our eldest out of nappies.
Monday, 24 September 2012
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.
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.
Tuesday, 14 August 2012
Engelbert
Right. It's been a while. Sorry. I've had a bit of an Olympics hiatus. Or writer's block. Or something. I don't want anyone to think that my delightful daughters have failed to provide any source material. Their lives, development and idiosyncrasies have been as entertaining as ever. I've just been too busy watching other people running and swimming and throwing stuff to document any of it. Let's see if I can remember any.
Our youngest now has seven teeth. It bothers my obsessive compulsive side ever so slightly that this is an uneven number, but I find it possible to forgive her on account of her asymmetrical grin being so massively endearing. As she draws within sight of her first birthday, her critical awareness of herself and her surroundings - or the first signs of healthy cynicism - are becoming apparent. Yet she continues to produce this grin with very pleasing regularity. Things which amuse her sufficiently include: waving, clapping, me saying "Ping!", her mother being within eyeshot, her sister laughing, her sister running away from her, hiding behind the curtains, being found behind the curtains.
She is also now rather good at standing up and even shuffling about on two feet as long as she has something to lean on. Or during the moments when she is no longer leaning on something, but has not yet realised this. Fortunately, she is also adept at falling over safely. Most of the time.
You may by now have inferred that our eldest is turning out to be a most excellent big sister. The two of them are developing an interdependent relationship which is almost always beneficial. Our eldest takes great pride and joy in enticing her little sister into a game of 'Run/Crawl Up and Down the Room as Quickly as Possible, Ideally Whilst Laughing.' Sometimes I join in, whether they invite me to or not. I must admit that it's surprisingly good fun although, if I'm honest, they need to work on the name.
When one laughs, the other laughs. When one cries, the other cries, often after enquiring sympathetically about the cause of distress. Even during these times of mutual woe, I am compelled to glow with paternal pride, my big, soppy heart bursting through my cliche of a chest.
When our firstborn displays maturity like this, I struggle to remember that she is not yet two-and-a-half years old. It doesn't help that she is the size of a four year-old. Nor that I have no real understanding of the age at which these developments normally take place. But I'm pretty sure most people are a bit older before they start calling their dad by his first name. She doesn't fully understand that this is what she is doing, but that doesn't stop it being funny and unsettling in equal measure.
Now. The arbitrary insistence on anonymity which I have always maintained on this blog is going to make this difficult to explain. Let's assume that my name is Engelbert. (It's not. Or is it? Ahhh...) My daughter has arrived at the conclusion that Engelbert is a word which must precede a request, for example: "Engelbert, can I have some ketchup please, Daddy?" She really is that polite, and also that keen on ketchup: just two more sources of my immense pride in her.
Other incidents and significances have occurred. I could, for example, mention the fact that my recent, restful week off work coincided perfectly with everyone having tonsillitis, or that my outstanding wife has recently gone into craft overdrive, creating a road mat, some cuddly robots and - only this evening - an excellent and inadvertently Cyndi Lauper-esque doll, to name but a few.
I could mention these and other things, but I must break myself back in gently from my Olympics hiatus. I can't even think of a funny joke to end with, so I'll just abruptly stop.
Our youngest now has seven teeth. It bothers my obsessive compulsive side ever so slightly that this is an uneven number, but I find it possible to forgive her on account of her asymmetrical grin being so massively endearing. As she draws within sight of her first birthday, her critical awareness of herself and her surroundings - or the first signs of healthy cynicism - are becoming apparent. Yet she continues to produce this grin with very pleasing regularity. Things which amuse her sufficiently include: waving, clapping, me saying "Ping!", her mother being within eyeshot, her sister laughing, her sister running away from her, hiding behind the curtains, being found behind the curtains.
She is also now rather good at standing up and even shuffling about on two feet as long as she has something to lean on. Or during the moments when she is no longer leaning on something, but has not yet realised this. Fortunately, she is also adept at falling over safely. Most of the time.
You may by now have inferred that our eldest is turning out to be a most excellent big sister. The two of them are developing an interdependent relationship which is almost always beneficial. Our eldest takes great pride and joy in enticing her little sister into a game of 'Run/Crawl Up and Down the Room as Quickly as Possible, Ideally Whilst Laughing.' Sometimes I join in, whether they invite me to or not. I must admit that it's surprisingly good fun although, if I'm honest, they need to work on the name.
When one laughs, the other laughs. When one cries, the other cries, often after enquiring sympathetically about the cause of distress. Even during these times of mutual woe, I am compelled to glow with paternal pride, my big, soppy heart bursting through my cliche of a chest.
When our firstborn displays maturity like this, I struggle to remember that she is not yet two-and-a-half years old. It doesn't help that she is the size of a four year-old. Nor that I have no real understanding of the age at which these developments normally take place. But I'm pretty sure most people are a bit older before they start calling their dad by his first name. She doesn't fully understand that this is what she is doing, but that doesn't stop it being funny and unsettling in equal measure.
Now. The arbitrary insistence on anonymity which I have always maintained on this blog is going to make this difficult to explain. Let's assume that my name is Engelbert. (It's not. Or is it? Ahhh...) My daughter has arrived at the conclusion that Engelbert is a word which must precede a request, for example: "Engelbert, can I have some ketchup please, Daddy?" She really is that polite, and also that keen on ketchup: just two more sources of my immense pride in her.
Other incidents and significances have occurred. I could, for example, mention the fact that my recent, restful week off work coincided perfectly with everyone having tonsillitis, or that my outstanding wife has recently gone into craft overdrive, creating a road mat, some cuddly robots and - only this evening - an excellent and inadvertently Cyndi Lauper-esque doll, to name but a few.
I could mention these and other things, but I must break myself back in gently from my Olympics hiatus. I can't even think of a funny joke to end with, so I'll just abruptly stop.
Tuesday, 19 June 2012
The daily grind
For many people, it's the scraping of nails on a blackboard. For my wife, it's the scraping of knives on dinner plates: a phenomenon I frequently - albeit unintentionally - cause. Everyone, it seems, has their own, personal trigger for becoming a shuddering slave to crawling skin. I once witnessed someone flee a room because an egg box was introduced to it, such was her morbid fear of touching such ovum containers.
My own nemesis is the feeling of dry, untreated wood, of precisely the kind they use to produce complimentary spoons in a well-known chain of sushi restaurants. I genuinely cannot have dessert there without borrowing some children's cutlery from one of my daughters. My wife openly and quite correctly mocks me for this, so I scrape the children's cutlery on my plate. I don't really. They serve food on plastic dishes there. Maybe this is why.
There is one excruciating agony upon which my wife and I do agree. Our youngest has, after several tiring weeks of trying, produced two top front teeth to complement the bottom ones which emerged a while ago and now sit proudly clear of her gums. Our delight at the hiatus in the sequence of sleepless, screamy nights that this development promised, has quickly been tempered by our daughter's new habit of grinding her new teeth against her older ones.
AAAARRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH etc.
What makes it really sinister is that you hear it before you see it. Scrape, scrape, scrape. 'What's that curious noise?' you may think to yourself, glancing enquiringly around the room in search of its source. The terror rises gradually as it dawns on you that the youngest of your beloved family is thoughtfully sliding her lower jaw from side to side against her upper jaw, happily oblivious to the abject mayhem caused by her actions. The realisation of the cause of the noise - like a vicious kazoo, made of knives, inside your brain - seems to increase its volume until you simply cannot bear it.
Invariably this results in screams of defeated anguish from one or both of her parents. And she sits there smiling at us.
I'm thinking of pulling her teeth out.
My own nemesis is the feeling of dry, untreated wood, of precisely the kind they use to produce complimentary spoons in a well-known chain of sushi restaurants. I genuinely cannot have dessert there without borrowing some children's cutlery from one of my daughters. My wife openly and quite correctly mocks me for this, so I scrape the children's cutlery on my plate. I don't really. They serve food on plastic dishes there. Maybe this is why.
There is one excruciating agony upon which my wife and I do agree. Our youngest has, after several tiring weeks of trying, produced two top front teeth to complement the bottom ones which emerged a while ago and now sit proudly clear of her gums. Our delight at the hiatus in the sequence of sleepless, screamy nights that this development promised, has quickly been tempered by our daughter's new habit of grinding her new teeth against her older ones.
AAAARRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH etc.
What makes it really sinister is that you hear it before you see it. Scrape, scrape, scrape. 'What's that curious noise?' you may think to yourself, glancing enquiringly around the room in search of its source. The terror rises gradually as it dawns on you that the youngest of your beloved family is thoughtfully sliding her lower jaw from side to side against her upper jaw, happily oblivious to the abject mayhem caused by her actions. The realisation of the cause of the noise - like a vicious kazoo, made of knives, inside your brain - seems to increase its volume until you simply cannot bear it.
Invariably this results in screams of defeated anguish from one or both of her parents. And she sits there smiling at us.
I'm thinking of pulling her teeth out.
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