I ended my last post with a provocative promise to reveal how we had spent the second half of my last week off. I have put off doing so, not because I'm a bit lazy, but because I have for the last month been struggling with an ethical dilemma. Honest.
For the truth is, my wife and I decided to expose our daughters to some admirably charitable activity. The dilemma arose from my concern that any such altruism is undermined if you start showing off about it afterwards. One has to question the motives of someone who is too keen to inform you of their generosity. Let's call this the Bono effect. Are the beneficiaries of such charity mere pawns in a vanity project? Does it even matter?
Ultimately, I have skirted around this debate by deciding that it's all fine a month later. So I can proudly describe to you the excellent examples we set for our children. Our first thought was to donate some blankets to the local homeless shelter. But, upon taking the sensible precaution of phoning them first (at risk of evoking the Bono effect), we were informed that cold, hard cash would be more useful. They're the experts, so we obliged. We signed up as organ donors. I had already done this years ago, but I did it again to be on the safe side. I hope I haven't double-booked my kidneys.
We also went to give blood. It was my first time, and our naive failure to book appointments meant that we endured a rather long wait at the temporary blood-letting venue: a somewhat evangelical church hall. The only reading material to hand was a bit on the Goddy side, so it was a struggle to entertain the girls without subjecting them to a kind of subliminal indoctrination. The resulting anxiety left me quite fearful of what was, to be fair, a bloody massive needle, by the time it was eased into my arm. I can honestly say though that it was completely painless, and over remarkably quickly. Also, the cliche about the glow of pride experienced by blood donors is surprisingly accurate, aided in my case by the handy visual aid which was the astonishing bruise that spread across my entire forearm over the following week. I showed that bruise to a lot of people. Bono effect be damned. I sort of miss it now. Horrific lesions aside, I strongly urge anyone who can give blood to do so. But make an appointment first.
So far, so socially responsible. But our daughters had really just seen us make some phone calls and sit in a church hall. For a more tangible demonstration of the joy of benevolence, we made up some bags of gifts: a chocolate bar, a lottery scratchcard, a stamped postcard (with a note suggesting that the recipient send a message to a loved one) and one or two other things whose exact natures I cannot recall. But they were definitely really charming. We went to a local town, whose identity I shall not disclose, and simply had a nice wander about, discarding our joyful offerings in unassuming public places. I think our daughters enjoyed themselves, and hopefully they picked up some sense of the day's purpose. I certainly experienced fulfillment, although I did feel a bit naughty: the guilt of a vigilante? My wife and I grew quite paranoid about a suspicious gentleman loitering in one park where we were spreading our love. We convinced ourselves that he was a local councillor, come to tell us off for failing to be nice through the proper channels. But it was ok: he was just a weird man hanging around in a park.
And so ended our days of commendable charity. I'm not really sure how effective it all was as a lesson in generosity for our children. I'm sure they've got a bit better at sharing with each other since. Can this be a coincidence?
Thursday, 28 February 2013
Thursday, 17 January 2013
Interesting places (part 1)
Last week I had a much needed post-christmas week off work. We can't afford a proper holiday, but we did our level best to recreate an authentic vacation experience, only without the luxury of paying someone else to sleep in a strange place. We did once enjoy a week in Cornwall with my parents when our eldest daughter was little more than a year old, but this was our first attempt at holidaying as a family of four so, as well as the usual, stress relief-based motivations, this was a chance to introduce our children to new experiences. So we got to enjoy not only the feast of culture with which we provided ourselves, but also our girls' reactions to it.
Our first excursion was to Canterbury: the uniquely interesting city where my wife and I met, fell in love, studied art and lived very happily for several years. Every return fills us with nostalgic yearnings to move back there, although I confess that the now unfeasible student lifestyle played a major role in the life we miss. But it remains a charming place with a lot to offer, so I relish any visit there.
Upon arriving in what turned out to be a wet and miserable day in Canterbury (in a weather sense only), we sacrificed our life savings in exchange for a parking space, then popped into the idiosyncratic bookshop in which both my wife and I had worked after graduating. Many of our former colleagues still work there. Some even recognised us. I was struck by the contrast I perceived between interacting with these people as an interesting art graduate, and as a responsible parent. I should stress that none of them treated us any differently (other than taking a delighted interest in being introduced to our children), but simply meeting them raised my awareness of the changes in our lives since we last had.
On the recommendation of our former manager, we proceeded to Canterbury's newly refurbished library, where we were positively jubilant to discover that the new gallery boasted an exhibition celebrating the work of children's picture book author and illustrator, Anthony Browne. We had inadvertently stumbled across some textbook Children's Day Out fare. Unfortunately, just as we paid and entered, two things happened: 1. A large gaggle of excited young schoolchildren appeared from nowhere to storm the gallery, and 2. Our eldest daughter spied an antique doll's house in an adjacent room. She really loves a doll's house, does our eldest daughter. The Anthony Browne exhibition was excellent; thoughtfully curated and generously interactive, but I am afraid to say that it failed entirely to be appreciated by us for these two reasons.
The rest of our day was passed visiting tourist attractions we had never felt it necessary to consider when we were residents. These mainly consisted of good, wholesome museums. Canterbury has a rich and varied history and I soaked up as much of it as I could (I'm a sucker for an artist's impression of a Roman settlement) while struggling to control a buggy and its occupant. We could really have predicted that this particular element of our cultural festival would appeal more to us than to our children, but I was honestly impressed with the small level of engagement they did muster. Above all, I feel that it's our responsibility to at least expose them to this environment, hopefully thus beginning the subliminal encouragement to be interested in interesting things.
With this in mind, we embarked the following day on their inaugural train journey. A train to Big London City, no less. Our older daughter in particular was mesmerised by this first leg of our journey alone. By the time we had arrived at Victoria and spent rather a long time looking for the right bus stop (we didn't dare take on the tube with a buggy), everybody's enthusiasm was under threat. But soon enough, a noble bus driver was transporting us westwards while dealing admirably with the obligatory Inexplicably Aggressive Passenger, and we arrived before long in Posh London. Amongst the million pound flats, tree lined avenues and estate agents' with their own bars of Kensington lies the Science Museum.
The Science Museum is cool. This was Daddy's treat. Mummy's treat was the astoundingly good restaurant within. But after eating the astoundingly good food we went to look at rockets and space and that sort of thing. And the flicker of education-based excitement I had contrived to witness in our daughters the previous day was reignited. I have to say that we were slightly underwhelmed by the proportion of the museum aimed specifically at young children, but enough of the bits that weren't seemed to engage them to some extent anyway. Our firstborn seemed particularly interested in the aeroplanes. She confessed to me that she would like to be a pilot even though the cockpits looked "a bit uncomfortable." Fair comment, really.
Inevitably, by the time we reached the fourth floor, certain people's levels of interest were flagging slightly. At this point we decided to skip the rest and simply pop next door to the Natural History Museum. My wife describes this, with some justification, as her favourite building in the world. Even if it was empty it would be worth a visit. But it's not empty. It's full of flippin' dinosaurs. Our youngest, probably the least rewarded by our week's activities so far, loved the dinosaurs with a passion quite impressive in a fifteen month-old. She was roaring fearlessly at the tyrannosaurus rex and everything. All too soon though, we had to drag her away so that we could commence what turned out to be an epic search for the correct bus stop to get us back to the train station.
We arrived home weary but suitably proud of ourselves. We hadn't seen everything we could have, but we had proved to ourselves that we can go to interesting places and do things. I genuinely cherish being a parent, but it does have a way of making one doubt that one can go to interesting places and do things. But one can. And we would do more such things before the week was out.
In an effort to avoid boring anyone with all the interestingness, though, I shall reveal the rest at a later date.
Our first excursion was to Canterbury: the uniquely interesting city where my wife and I met, fell in love, studied art and lived very happily for several years. Every return fills us with nostalgic yearnings to move back there, although I confess that the now unfeasible student lifestyle played a major role in the life we miss. But it remains a charming place with a lot to offer, so I relish any visit there.
Upon arriving in what turned out to be a wet and miserable day in Canterbury (in a weather sense only), we sacrificed our life savings in exchange for a parking space, then popped into the idiosyncratic bookshop in which both my wife and I had worked after graduating. Many of our former colleagues still work there. Some even recognised us. I was struck by the contrast I perceived between interacting with these people as an interesting art graduate, and as a responsible parent. I should stress that none of them treated us any differently (other than taking a delighted interest in being introduced to our children), but simply meeting them raised my awareness of the changes in our lives since we last had.
On the recommendation of our former manager, we proceeded to Canterbury's newly refurbished library, where we were positively jubilant to discover that the new gallery boasted an exhibition celebrating the work of children's picture book author and illustrator, Anthony Browne. We had inadvertently stumbled across some textbook Children's Day Out fare. Unfortunately, just as we paid and entered, two things happened: 1. A large gaggle of excited young schoolchildren appeared from nowhere to storm the gallery, and 2. Our eldest daughter spied an antique doll's house in an adjacent room. She really loves a doll's house, does our eldest daughter. The Anthony Browne exhibition was excellent; thoughtfully curated and generously interactive, but I am afraid to say that it failed entirely to be appreciated by us for these two reasons.
The rest of our day was passed visiting tourist attractions we had never felt it necessary to consider when we were residents. These mainly consisted of good, wholesome museums. Canterbury has a rich and varied history and I soaked up as much of it as I could (I'm a sucker for an artist's impression of a Roman settlement) while struggling to control a buggy and its occupant. We could really have predicted that this particular element of our cultural festival would appeal more to us than to our children, but I was honestly impressed with the small level of engagement they did muster. Above all, I feel that it's our responsibility to at least expose them to this environment, hopefully thus beginning the subliminal encouragement to be interested in interesting things.
With this in mind, we embarked the following day on their inaugural train journey. A train to Big London City, no less. Our older daughter in particular was mesmerised by this first leg of our journey alone. By the time we had arrived at Victoria and spent rather a long time looking for the right bus stop (we didn't dare take on the tube with a buggy), everybody's enthusiasm was under threat. But soon enough, a noble bus driver was transporting us westwards while dealing admirably with the obligatory Inexplicably Aggressive Passenger, and we arrived before long in Posh London. Amongst the million pound flats, tree lined avenues and estate agents' with their own bars of Kensington lies the Science Museum.
The Science Museum is cool. This was Daddy's treat. Mummy's treat was the astoundingly good restaurant within. But after eating the astoundingly good food we went to look at rockets and space and that sort of thing. And the flicker of education-based excitement I had contrived to witness in our daughters the previous day was reignited. I have to say that we were slightly underwhelmed by the proportion of the museum aimed specifically at young children, but enough of the bits that weren't seemed to engage them to some extent anyway. Our firstborn seemed particularly interested in the aeroplanes. She confessed to me that she would like to be a pilot even though the cockpits looked "a bit uncomfortable." Fair comment, really.
Inevitably, by the time we reached the fourth floor, certain people's levels of interest were flagging slightly. At this point we decided to skip the rest and simply pop next door to the Natural History Museum. My wife describes this, with some justification, as her favourite building in the world. Even if it was empty it would be worth a visit. But it's not empty. It's full of flippin' dinosaurs. Our youngest, probably the least rewarded by our week's activities so far, loved the dinosaurs with a passion quite impressive in a fifteen month-old. She was roaring fearlessly at the tyrannosaurus rex and everything. All too soon though, we had to drag her away so that we could commence what turned out to be an epic search for the correct bus stop to get us back to the train station.
We arrived home weary but suitably proud of ourselves. We hadn't seen everything we could have, but we had proved to ourselves that we can go to interesting places and do things. I genuinely cherish being a parent, but it does have a way of making one doubt that one can go to interesting places and do things. But one can. And we would do more such things before the week was out.
In an effort to avoid boring anyone with all the interestingness, though, I shall reveal the rest at a later date.
Wednesday, 19 December 2012
You would not believe how little sleep I get, and I get a lot more sleep than my wife
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.
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, 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.
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