Bringing Up Baby
It's strange how quickly you get used to having a baby in your life. Beforehand I thought that everything would be different, and I'd write nothing in my LiveJournal except baby stories. Now having a toddler wobbling around the room moving toys from a to b and back again is just part of the scenery.
In the old days I used to go out every night of the week; now just holding onto my Monday night boardgames group seems like a bit of a feat! But I don't really miss it. Going out a lot is quite exhausting, and mostly I think I did it for fear of what I might miss out on if I didn't. In practice I've discovered that there is just as much going on indoors. All these years I was missing out on a new golden age of TV! And giving work and sleep their proper due.
The rumour that you don't get any sleep when you're a parent is greatly exaggerated in my opinion, though Tessa would probably cuff me around the head for saying that, as she's the one on the front line when baby goes insomniac. There were some rough weeks early on, but nowadays Magda gets put down to sleep by about 7.30, wakes up a couple of times over the course of the evening needing to have her soother stuck back in her mouth, and then gives us a wakeup call sometime before 7am. That's not that bad, is it? Actually tonight she gave us an extra hour or two of restlessness and hassle after waking up around 9, but these are the exception and not the rule.
And new human beings change so fast, that's what's great about them, so fast that the eye can't really follow it. When I see pictures of Magda from a year ago I can't believe what a baldy she was, because her thatch of hair seems to have been around forever now. I find it hard to remember the months of her lying around immobile all day, because the roaming, racing and tumbling is so much a part of life now. Soon it will seem impossible to recall a time when she couldn't talk. The glimmerings of communication are all there now, she can name balls and books and balloons, even if it's all with the same sound, and she can find a frog in the bath every time without fail, even if she's not interested in fish, seahorse or octopus. When she drops something on the floor she makes a wistful "ooh" sound that's just like an owl, and her 18-month-old friend Edward has taught her that dogs say "fff fff fff fff". (He also says kangaroo in a brilliant way that sounds a bit like "khhhhhhhhhhhooo".)
You can go forward with babies, basically, but never back. When I become famous and have a Wikipedia entry, nay a Wiki, all of my own, there will never be a time when my daughter is not referred to alongside me. You think relationships are going to last forever and quite often they don't, and a few years later you can't even remember what they looked like or the sound of their voice, well there's none of that with having a child, they really are forever. If anyone needed some kind of rock-solid foundation to their life, I did, I'm sure most of you would agree! I like being a dad.
In the old days I used to go out every night of the week; now just holding onto my Monday night boardgames group seems like a bit of a feat! But I don't really miss it. Going out a lot is quite exhausting, and mostly I think I did it for fear of what I might miss out on if I didn't. In practice I've discovered that there is just as much going on indoors. All these years I was missing out on a new golden age of TV! And giving work and sleep their proper due.
The rumour that you don't get any sleep when you're a parent is greatly exaggerated in my opinion, though Tessa would probably cuff me around the head for saying that, as she's the one on the front line when baby goes insomniac. There were some rough weeks early on, but nowadays Magda gets put down to sleep by about 7.30, wakes up a couple of times over the course of the evening needing to have her soother stuck back in her mouth, and then gives us a wakeup call sometime before 7am. That's not that bad, is it? Actually tonight she gave us an extra hour or two of restlessness and hassle after waking up around 9, but these are the exception and not the rule.
And new human beings change so fast, that's what's great about them, so fast that the eye can't really follow it. When I see pictures of Magda from a year ago I can't believe what a baldy she was, because her thatch of hair seems to have been around forever now. I find it hard to remember the months of her lying around immobile all day, because the roaming, racing and tumbling is so much a part of life now. Soon it will seem impossible to recall a time when she couldn't talk. The glimmerings of communication are all there now, she can name balls and books and balloons, even if it's all with the same sound, and she can find a frog in the bath every time without fail, even if she's not interested in fish, seahorse or octopus. When she drops something on the floor she makes a wistful "ooh" sound that's just like an owl, and her 18-month-old friend Edward has taught her that dogs say "fff fff fff fff". (He also says kangaroo in a brilliant way that sounds a bit like "khhhhhhhhhhhooo".)
You can go forward with babies, basically, but never back. When I become famous and have a Wikipedia entry, nay a Wiki, all of my own, there will never be a time when my daughter is not referred to alongside me. You think relationships are going to last forever and quite often they don't, and a few years later you can't even remember what they looked like or the sound of their voice, well there's none of that with having a child, they really are forever. If anyone needed some kind of rock-solid foundation to their life, I did, I'm sure most of you would agree! I like being a dad.