Dave the Dad 11 - Plan Eh?
I am full of admiration for those parents who plan everything.Every playgroup seems full of them. They had sex on October 31st at about 7.27 in the evening so that they would have a Summer baby, consummated under the aegis of a lucky number when Jupiter was bowling into the realm of Bluto and Popeye was in the ascendancy. They carried out surreptitious research in local Primary schools trying to glean the most popular names, in order to steer clear of them. They somehow bought newspapers on the day of their child's birth so that they could be presented with a retrospective account of current affairs at the age of 18. They eat the right foods, they buy Baby Einstein, they read de Bono on how to teach their child to think and every game has a predicted outcome. These parents are amazing.
Food is just one arena in which these parents excel. It has long been a bugbear of mine that so many friends assume that, had I not met Jane, I would now be either an obese alcoholic or thin - but - dead. They may have a point though for she does insist on healthy eating and feeds Tom and me appropriately. Nevertheless problems occur. Any parent wandering with their child though Queens Park in the late Spring might have witnessed what appeared to be an unsteady semi-toddler holding on for dear life to the rear of his buggy, stuffing himself with a piece of chocolate cake approximately half the size of William Shatner - T.J. Hooker years! Jane was sat down, oblivious, on the other side, enjoying the fact that Tom appeared distracted with something not directly related to her. She was not mainlining, snorting vodka, or reading Chat! but simply and quietly sipping her tea. In the excitement every temporarily ignored parent feels she had forgotten the extraordinarily rich cake bought minutes before which she had stored on the buggy's hood. Personally I thought it showed initiative on Tom's part. And a good deal of determination, for the fact that he managed to get most of the piece in his mouth and stomach went against at least six biological laws. Forget the dilemmas caused by Fermat or Newton; this was surprising.
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At least he was dressed systematically having been kitted out by his mum. I'm officially Dress-senselexic and each morning tend to pull on the first three items of clothing I find nearest my bed. Same with Tom. When I'm dressing him. I've lost count of the number of times Jane has whisked Tom up and only discovered at the mouth of the washing machine that he wasn't laundry.
Stair gates exercised our imaginations for a bit. As we live in the Hanover district of Brighton we have just about enough room in our house for breathing, some brief movement and the occasional sing-a-long, as long as nobody gets carried away and starts waving their arms. The stairwells are similarly sizerly-challenged. Do we get a custom-made gate? Do we want one that opens? Inwards? Outwards? One that you climb over? Metal or wood? In the end Tom got bored with the waiting and learned how to get up and down stairs on his own. Now, at 1, he scuttles up the stairs quite dexterously and can manoeuvre himself down (slightly more gingerly thank God) by the following method. He approaches the top stair sideways and lowers his left leg onto the next down. He then swivels so that he is facing the stairs and, like a horse (left leg/right arm/right leg/left arm) moves down. Most of you will probably doubt my simile as the image of a horse sliding downstairs is at best clumsy. That's the point. It doesn't look good, or even safe, but it seems to work for our little man.
Which brings me to the night-time routine. From the moment we placed Tom in his own room we have been questioning our actions, reading published views and chatting to other parents about 'best fit' methods. Neither of us warmed to the 'Let him cry' idea largely because of Tom's inordinately loud cry. Some sort of cross between your bog-standard Banshee and Maria Sharapova. Fortunately he doesn't cry too much. Unfortunately he does like a good shout. On Monday mornings when I'm looking after him for the day there always comes a time when he realises he has been left with a father who offers neither the unceasing patience of his mother, nor her accomplished ability to plan great and exciting adventures. The best he gets from me is a willing participant in playing with his toys and cheerful enthusiasm. Tom subsequently scoots around the house braying 'MUMUMUMUMUMUMUMUMUM'. His favourite is a wander over to the entrance of the kitchen where he fully expects her to be, putting the finishing touches on a newly minted batch of Semolina.
I digress. Lack of planning see! Anyway, we ended up placing him in his cot and sitting with him; reading, chatting and then smoothly withdrawing eye contact whilst sitting in a rocker nearby. At first this routine took up to 40 minutes a night, a massive block of time when suddenly you only have 17 seconds of relaxation time every hour. Some save this up and blow it all at once in a visit to the toilet. I still try to read and the masochist in me now only chooses books over 1000 pages. Carlyle wrote that 'In books lies the soul of the whole Past Time'. I'm guessing he didn't have a kid knocking about in the Present Time; pulling the candles over, smearing Weetabix on his tights, trying to stuff his quill up the Burmese.
Recently we've got a turnaround of about 20 minutes which seems to us a pretty decent deal considering he then sleeps through for nigh on twelve hours straight from 7.30 pm. Despite this some still try to tell us we're doing the wrong thing. I don't know about that but I do know that berating other parents' child-rearing methods whilst looking like a raccoon on Prozac isn't going to win you any adherents. Mind you, I thought that Scientology would never attract an audience. Invented by a Science Fiction writer/All-Seeing Prophet who once said 'Make money. Make more money. Make other people make money.'? Still, he is a multi-billionaire now. That, that, was forward planning.
September 23 2006
Dave Fouracre aka "Dave the Dad" is a regular feature writer here at thebabywebsite.com. Read more about his hilarious experiences as a Dad. |
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