Dave the Dad 26 - Milestones and Petulance
We had our first public to-do t’other day.Borders, after the Brighton Children’s Parade, and Jane offers Tom a spoonful of my Coffee-Banana-Pazazz-Choc-Chip-Ice-Health-Surprise. From the start I didn’t like the idea as a) the drink was quite sugary for one so young, b) he was drawing close to nap time and, crucially, c) Jane had cunningly ordered coffee so he’d already drunk loads of mine anyway and had really messed up my straw by biting the top!
Well, quelle surprise!, he thoroughly enjoyed the first spoonful of this Angel’s Wee and then - interestingly only then - Jane decided that it might not be so good to spoon feed our 20 month-old son pure blended chocolate-sugar. Tom disagreed, in much the same way that Pol Pot disagreed that we should all live and let live. With a plastic froth-encrusted spoon in one fist and a fist in the other he yelled ‘But I beg to differ, I believe I should have another mouthful of that lovely drink’. This came out as ‘Yeeeaarrrgghhhh’ and confused several fellow customers into clapping their dinky laptops shut in disgust at discovering a human in a café who doesn’t want to sit there on their own, silently, nibbling their muffin, showing Tetris who’s the man!
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Even so we did feel a touch responsible and so I heaved our screamy bundle up and whisked him off to the kids’ books. Thankfully he stopped immediately, tried to get into the lift for a couple of minutes and, after two repeats of ‘We’re Going On A Bear Hunt’, cheered up considerably when he saw another child apparently trying to remove a dad’s face with their bare hands. He always finds other babies’ tantrums fascinating; seeming to take the view that one child’s justified anger is another’s fuss and nonsense.
I can’t really blame Jane, I think she was excited at the prospect of him eating something, anything. I remember the same concept applied to me when I started reading Tom Sharpe as a teenager. My eldest sister had read Jane Eyre at 14 months and so the prospect of me reading ‘Wilt’ at 14 shouldn’t really have floated my mum’s boat, but up to that age I had only managed to work my way through The Amazing Spiderman. We now cheer when Tom so much as picks up a carrot. The fact that he usually proceeds to use it as a stick for spooning tomato ketchup down his throat is neither here nor there.
We were glad his strop didn’t last as we’d had a great morning. We had spent an hour and a half during the Parade in a sunny spot with huge paper-mache Gromits, rainbow flocks of balloons, smiley singers, bouncing dancers, people banging drums, people dressed up, faces painted and, coup de grace, small dogs. Jane, always a creative force musically, gave Tom his rattles and encouraged him to join in. He did. Using Jane’s face as an impromptu drum. Clever really; lateral thinking and all that. Still, we took them off him and enjoyed the rest with a little gentle bouncing.
The fact that he might be able to use his parents as surrogate objects seems to be appealing to him at the moment. Later that night we chased each other around the upstairs landing after his bath as per usual until I finally collapsed and lay prone, pretending to fall asleep. Tom fell onto me with a squeal, gave my midriff a few swift kicks, yanked my ears a bit, tried to pop my left eye with his nit comb and then used the back of my head as a bongo. I submitted to all this like a Buddhist which could be why I realised too late that he was scrambling onto my back. So there I was, lying flat on my face, with Tom surfing me. Try it! You are as completely helpless as you could ever be. Luckily when he finally decided to fall off he didn’t hurt himself. Just me as he crumpled onto the back of my knees. Phew!
I’ll leave you with an important milestone, passed on Sunday morning. Although massive there is no certainty that it will be where we left it in two days time; ergo, Tom did something impressive that may not be repeated for the next 13 months. Our gym is building an outdoor children’s playground for which it has laid the foundations and (wait for it) a slide. Encircling this is fencing, 8 feet high and irreparably linked. Insurmountable really. Unless you are under two feet high and weigh less than three stone. So. Three minutes of longing was swept away by a milli-second of clarity and Tom was off. Jane tried to grab his feet but realised that she could do no more without physically manhandling him and yanking him backwards. So we stood, 18 inches apart - son on one side, parents on the other - either intoning ‘No’ in our sternest voices or pointing frantically towards the slide and squeaking.
And we won. Suddenly he bent over, lay on his tummy and snuggled through the gap back into our arms. We won! Well, not a real victory as Tom opted to listen to us, but it’s the first important occasion when Tom hasn’t understood ‘No’ to mean ‘Oh go on then and laugh in our faces at the same time as you are pouring milk on the DVD player’. Success. A milestone no less. But one that points in equal measure towards the future and a hidden camera that will shortly catch us as we slip backwards and fall, ever so hilariously, onto our backs. And we know damn well that if that happens Tom will probably rear above us and pour milk in our faces. Whilst laughing.
May 21 2007
Dave Fouracre
Dave Fouracre aka "Dave the Dad" is a regular feature writer here at thebabywebsite.com.
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