My wife and daughter went on holiday without me recently. It’s a sign of how magnificent my good fortune is that saying goodbye to them was one of the toughest things I’ve had to deal with in a while, although I was thrilled they were off to have such a good time.
I’m beginning to have a better insight into how phenomenally difficult it must have been for my parents to send us away when we were young, and the week long trip was totally trivial in comparison.
As a child, my sister and I would pester our parents for stories of when they were young. My parents narratives about their childhood evoked a sense of wonder that I hope never to lose, and when I think back to those anecdotes I have this wonderful sepia picture of what things must have been like.
My parents have recently been writing to us with recollections of their youth, partly to help us understand them better and partly because my father at least seems to enjoy the exercise and mental discipline of cataloguing these things. It’s wonderful for us to get a sense of our parents beyond our every day experience of them.
And so I wonder whether I should put down my childhood memories for Emily. As lives go, mine is one of tremendous consequence to me and my loved ones, but little to the world at large, but can’t help but feel that attempting to capture some kind of narrative beyond this brain-hopping bloggery would be a useful thing to do.
Has anyone else had a go at a private autobiography / journal for future generations?
Having a child, as I’ve noted, sparks memories of your own childhood. Two in particular rose to the surface recently, and whilst neither is quite appropriate for Emily’s current state of cognitive development, they’re definitely ones I’d like to consider when the time comes.
The first was mental arithmetic. I must have been 6 or 7 years old, and my father – a trained corporate lawyer with a self-professed inability to deal with maths to any significant degree – started me off with some mental arithmetic workbooks. I’m sure I cheated at the time – I had a good memory and memory trumps calculation every time – but in time I definitely took in enough tips and tricks that to this date Mathemagic is a skill I carry with me and use on a daily basis. Admittedly my numeracy is a cause for some gentle mocking derision from my wife (“waaaaaaaah!” I can hear her say), but its inestimably useful.
The second was chess. My parents took us early on to classes with the Malaysian master, one Peter Long (and Jimmy Liew, an International master). Peter and Jimmy are still around somewhere, living the corporate life with some chess on the side, but at the time they ran chess classes for kids out of a house in suburban KL. It consisted primarily of Peter and Jimmy playing multiple games of chess simultaneously, against the clock, against all of us, and whilst I’m sure I didn’t think I enjoyed it that much at the time, I look back on it fondly and maintain some basic faculty with the game. My dad used to make us read books of openings and the like – in the hope perhaps that we would become the next Garry Kasparovs (it was the 80s, a heady time in the world of chess), but my sister winning in the under 12s category at a National tournament was the extent of our triumph. I did later tournament a little in the UK under the watchful eye of my Stowe English and chess teacher, Steven Thompson, acquiring a middling ranking on the UK chess circuit. But it’s been a long time, and we don’t currently even have a chess set.
So I’ve got a few things to buy before Emily hits the stage of cognitive development where either of these things might prove interesting, and have an enduring stack of gratitude for my parents for exposing me to stuff like this.
Also, chess sets are apparently expensive.
NB post edited following some memory prompts and helpful searches from my Dad and cousin Michelle. Thanks!
Until Emily started weaning, I noted food combinations that babies were sold with some mystery. Who thought that salmon, parsnip and courgette were a sensible thing to blend together and feed to someone? But since she’s been eating more I’ve gained a little more insight into the process by which parents come up with food for their little ones.
Absolute, blind luck.
Surely no kind of measured, quantitative testing can make sense for baby foods? The little monkeys seem to have arbitrary and fast-changing standards by which the enjoyment of any given flavour is gauged. Heaven one day can be hell the next.
I suspect that somewhere, there’s a random flavour generator adding odd combinations of protein, carb and veg together in the hope that small people will find those pots of blended mush tasty….
I’ve written before about the uncertainty of choosing stuff in a new sector and the value of brand shopping, and I seem to have acquired a new brand benchmark – BabyDan is apparently, for me, the BMW of baby products. Whether that’s because its Danish and I have a bias thanks to Amanda’s heritage there, or it’s the good experience of the couple of bits we have from them already it’s hard to say. Amanda finds it pretty funny, but I’m a sucker for this sort of stuff – and prefer to build up trust in a few quality brands than risk wasting money elsewhere.
We’re having to look at a lot of stuff as Emily becomes more mobile (crawling? pah, easy at 8 months. Standing by myself? On it. Walking? Give me a couple of weeks…).
Babyproofing is a fiddly process. I don’t have a solution for my AV stuff or TV, we’ve got some BabyDan safety gates and are getting an oven guard and some cupboard locks. Amanda has some plug socket safety guards. I’m frantically searching eBay for some Ikea wall-fixings for the DVD racks. We’re trying to strike the balance between keeping Emily well away from things that are outright and immediately dangerous and deciding that some things – we’re just going to teach her to steer clear of. After all, we might have a baby-safe house, but when she’s at other people’s houses she should know that pulling the TV down on her head or posting toys through the DVD slot is a no-no.
There’s some clever tech available. Magnetic lock-and-keys for cupboards, heat-dissipating overlays for oven doors and the like, not to mention safety edgings for coffee tables. But it’s a learning process and I’m sure we’ll iterate as we go… anyone got any recommendations on particularly awesome baby-safety kit that we shouldn’t be without?
Sunday was yet another wonderful experience. I still hadn’t shifted into the mindset of being a dad as far as the day itself was concerned so being presented with a set of awesome Superman cuff-links and a railway pass holder was a wonderful surprise at breakfast (which was a bacon sandwich – Emily/Amanda are awesome!).
It was a day spent bustling about doing things, hanging out with Em whilst Amanda did some work, playing in the afternoon sun, searching for bikes with baby seats and visiting the local VW dealer (another indulgence for me from Am/Em), assembling forts in the living room and scrabbling around on hands and knees finding innovative ways of making Em chuckle and Amanda smile. In many ways, a typical Sunday. But absolutely glorious, of course, and tinged with the poignancy of arbitrary significance (Father’s day is largely a Hallmark holiday, after all).
There were a couple of interesting interludes – an unexpected email from my old friend Ellen with the below wonderful song from Ben Folds had me thinking about the future.
This Google Chrome ad also triggered a bit of introspection and future gazing. I wonder if the me of five years ago seeing that advert would have immediately shoved it into the ‘ignore’ pile, or would have welled up with the same, bottom-of-heart feeling that it evoked in me when I saw it yesterday.
A wonderful day. And nice that it started with us speaking to my Dad on Skype before he flew back to Malaysia – his first Father’s day as a grandpa.
On the inspiration of a random tweet, a well-established meme, father’s day, and the presence of a cute dog and baby at our house last night, we built our own version of Dogfort.
Huge fun, although vaguely disappointed that the seat cushions don’t come off our sofa. I think we might have to make it a key selection criteria of the next one we buy…
We’re doing, as I may have mentioned, the ludicrously priced but lots of fun Waterbabies course at the moment. At our introductory session the manager for the Basingstoke branch was trying to convey how much passion people have for Waterbabies – by explaining how he and his wife both chucked their jobs to take it on full time.
To me, the message was: this is one awesome business opportunity. A little arithmetic confirms it: the courses cost about £14 per 30 minute session per baby, there are about 6 babies per session, and there must be at least 10-12 sessions per day at the weekend. Simple arithmetic – one branch could be taking £2000+ per weekend, plus the weekday sessions. That’s one heckuva business model, given the franchise nature of the business.
They give away loads of branded stuff – swimming suits (ostensibly to protect the pool, but also to promote Waterbabies when parents take their little ones elsewhere) and carshades (which parents will use when they take their kids out to places where other parents and kids go). Cunning, low-cost marketing.
So they’re clever chappies. Emily is beginning to enjoy it so we’ll have to give a second term some proper thought – although I must confess her only no-cry session was when Daddy wasn’t in charge of looking after her in the pool :-(.
One of the things that’s taken the most getting used to with Emily for me is understanding the need to respect her personal space. With other people’s babies I’ve known in the past, there’s been a lot of play, cuddles, bouncing, etc., apparently on our own terms. With Em, we’ve become incredibly aware of the need to let her mark out her own boundaries for play.
We’ve been disciplined about it – never thinking or speaking of her as ‘baby’ but always as Emily (or various unspeakably cute variations on that theme). And as she develops and her personality continues to present itself, it’s been amazing to watch her dictate the terms of engagement with other people.
The other day, my dad tried to pick her up for a cuddle before she was quite ready for him and I suggested he hold back, and just hold his arms out and smile at her. Sure enough, Emily sized him up, stuck her arms out and leapt into his arms for a bit of a play.
Wonderful to see.
My 8-month-old daughter has a really good way of demonstrating market forces, in particular supply and demand.
When there is limited supply (i.e. I don’t have the toy) demand is proportionally great, and I will do anything to obtain the goods required, especially if I think the goods required are being deliberately withheld by an oppressive regime (playful parent) – measures may include clambering over interfering parents, crying and/or grabbing painfully (the baby equivalent of a declaration of war).
When there is a glut of supply (i.e. I have the toy), the demand dwindles (and I can commence one of my routine experiments to verify that gravity is still working by dropping aforementioned toy on the ground, preferably from a height) – the analogue of losing interest in a war on foreign soil.
Am I extending the metaphor too far?