...where we left off

So, three and a half years have passed, during which time the author has avoided total stupefaction, but the blog's subject has progressed in bounds, hops and leaps, not to mention the occasional sprint.

Indeed there is now another reason to resume these posts, or rather another being: #2 has joined number one. However, as #2 arrived in 2008, any authorial claim to this being the main inspiration is a little stretched.

In 2006 I was subsumed by the world of nappies, nocturnal bottles and sleep torture. This inferno survived, I find today's paternal duties are more satisfying, involving as they do the production of answers to a sequence of intuitive questions, and the odd highly polished reasoned remark.

The subject of this evening's line of questioning was death. I knew this one was, well, like death, inevitable. I hadn't expected it to emerge from a discussion of the solar system, but then perhaps I am underestimating #1's imagination, or overrating my own powers of foresight. Both are perhaps true.

Now, the death question can elicit a range of answers, largely because it's the one we try at most. There is no clear route to an answer, rather a few hand-holds up a rather steep and forbidding mountain. My preferred answer - that death is simply the mechanism by which we return to non-existence - is perhaps too much for a small brain to process. But ducking the question is not morally sound, and I'd hope #1 would protest later in life if she thought daddy hopped out of the ring at the first sign of a fight.

The problem which arises is that children, unavoidably self-centred as they are, don't so much conceptualise death as personalise it. The question is not "What is death?" but "Why will I die?".

Worse, it ceases to be a question and becomes a statement: "But I don't want to die!" (The exclamation mark is not for effect. This is how it is said.) And this becomes the stuff of bad dreams, with the sub-conscious doing its best to terrify the mind into giving some answers.

The introduction to death in this way is, of course, merely the start of the journey - it is the first few steps all over again, and the parent watches the toddling with some apprehension. Where it goes from here is all to obvious. Why do I have to die? What happens to me when I die? We know, thanks to science, the answers to these questions. But to jump straight to these responses would miss the point that the question is philosophical in its intention. This is not to say that one should withhold the science. Rather, I reckon I should be prepared to work to those answers with some care, and in no particular hurry. Certainty may be absurd, but the doubt part requires tender mercies, at least at first.

Baby + 270

Is this the world's most neglected Blog, I wonder? I have no way of answering this question, of course, but it has been so long since I last entered some text that I am mocking the essential idea of a Blog: that it is an expression of things current. Have I created an anti-Blog?

Such a lot has happened since I last put fingers to keyboard. Chief among these events is my daughter's decision to stand, albeit with a support, such as a cot, washing machine, or convenient parental leg. It is hard to make sense of the emotion on seeing your child vertical; it is almost as if in that moment she had made the transition from babyhood to something recognisably childlike.

Before she started to balance on two legs, I had been pondering whether sitting or crawling is a more significant development. I think there is a popular view that crawling is the more significant of the two events. However, because it involves using all four legs, and the crouch which goes with crawling is necessarily a poor position from which to survey the world, I think the crawl is more inhibiting that a sitting position. I have watched my daughter make sense of the world, manipulate objects, and organise her thoughts while sitting still. I will encourage her to continue this reflective stance. To paraphrase Pascal, many of men's miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone. Purposeful stasis can broaden the mind far more than travel as travel rarely involves imagination; indeed visiting a place one had imagined is invariably disappointing.

Now that my daughter is palpably a curious and happy human being I have found I am desperately keen to return home before she goes to bed. In recent weeks this impulse has pulled hard at my insides, and any time lost getting home is massively frustrating. Mercifully I have a very short journey. I could not imagine missing these times; I won't get them with her again.

Someone not spending enough time with my daughter is Mr Donk Donk. I have still not given him new Duracell life power; in fact I haven't seen him for weeks. The new cot favourite is Barney Bear. He is perhaps more of a parental than daughter favourite as he seems to have a power over junior such that she sleeps when he is proximate. Amazingly he achieves this without any electrical circuits - he is an old-fashioned, self-propelled Bear.

Please raise a glass to Barney.

I should also mention a strange incident last week in which I was abused (verbally) on a bus by a middle-aged woman. The circumstances are not important (crowded bus etc.), but it is safe to assume that 30+ degree temperatures had not helped her mood. I let her exhortations to move into non-existance space wash over me at the time, but I am drawn to conclude that the social order may be starting to invert in some odd Ballardian fashion when bus pass holders start to attack younger passengers. As there are so many baby boomers, it may be time to revaluate the source of societal threats. I doubt a Hoodie would either want, or be able to lambast fellow passengers with detailed exhortations on the seating rules for London Transport buses...

Baby + 247

As we drove to Wales this week I speculated whether our daughter was happy about our choice of holiday destination.

It is rare to find English people who have not been to Wales. It is almost as rare to find English people who recount stories of uninterrupted sunshine and soaring temperatures. Wales is, in most people’s experience I expect, a place of notable wetness.

Our daughter travelled free from such preconceptions. In fact she travelled in a state of complete ignorance about where she was going, and why she was going there.

This is something that adults experience rarely, if at all, unless they have the good fortune to have a partner, husband, wife, or family who spirits them to an exotic or romantic location (Venice, for example). Not having a choice is good. It is very difficult to have expectations about something of which you are ignorant, and thus much harder to be disappointed.

It happened that our luck was in this week. It rained, of course, but as it would not be Antarctica without snow, so Wales would not be Wales without a good downpour.

This time, aside from one afternoon of rain, it was warm and dry, and our daughter was able to crawl about the lawn of the place at which we were staying and denude it of daisies and dandelions.

But bonding with the environment in this way has its drawbacks, and I would urge new parents to agree a policy as to which of Mother Nature’s creations they are happy to let their child consume. I consider myself fairly open on matters of diet, and unless a passing dog or cat has made use of grass or weed-type-flower-type-things they are fair game for junior’s digestive system. After all, primitive man managed on a lot less, and we haven’t done badly since these simple days.

Mrs McMahon is more cautious on such matters, and I was cautioned regularly to monitor the proximity of feral vegetable matter to our daughter’s gullet. I do not think she was wrong, but I do wonder whether it is odd to have a more liberal stance on smoking grass than eating it – particularly when one considers the nutritional value of freshly grown blades of the green stuff. For the sake of continued domestic harmony, though, I shall not explore such inconsistencies of thought in any depth.

I will conclude this entry by recommending Wales, or at least the Brecon Beacons. The Black Mountains are quite stunningly beautiful, and I experience great joy clambering up Hay Bluff with my daughter on my back.

Bab + 237

How to be a good father during a World Cup?

This question does not have an easy answer as inevitably a father’s duties to his children come into conflict with a realisation that the TV schedules are full of exciting sporting action.

I took a lead from my own father on this delicate issue over the weekend. He has seen more or less every World Cup since the late 50s/early 60s, and importantly he has been a father since the 1978 tournament.

He and I were left in charge of his grandaughter (my daughter) on Monday. It happened that Italy and Australia were facing off in the second round. What to do?

The unanimous decision was to plonk baby in front of the TV with a selection of favourite toys. Fortunately baby took a keen interest in the moving picture as well as the toys, and as she is now able to sit upright she did an excellent impression of someone with an interest in football. Interestingly she didn’t crawl at all during the game, so perhaps she has a genuine concern for the fate of this 2006 tournament.

That my daughter can both crawl and sit marks a significant shift in her development. I had expected to be chasing her around our flat as she explored its every recess. For now she is content with short straight-line bursts. The great childhood expeditions are still to come.

Baby + 232

Dad

I can crawl. I know you know this already, but I sense there is great veracity in the written word for you. So here it is again: I can crawl.

You know this already. You watched me shuffle along the carpet on Monday. You became very excited, and when you told Mummy on the telephone she did not believe you (a condition of so many wind-ups, I suspect).

I enjoy crawling, but I don't think I am a long distance crawler, more a sprinter. It is hard on the knees, you see. Perhaps you could find a more amenable floor covering when we move. I like grass, but perhaps that it is not a sensible surface inside a house. What do I know, though? I am barely half a year old.

I wanted to say well done on your bets that Australia and Ghana would qualify from their respective groups. That is great foresight by anyone's standards. I do hope I see some of the winnings.

Lots of love. Your daughter

Baby + 227

It's the World Cup and it is clear that my seven and a half month old could not care less.

I have been a World Cup afficianado since 1986, when I can remember the heroics of Lineker and Beardsley, and the evil genius of Maradona. The games were televised late in the evening, of course, because it was in Mexico. As a special treat I was allowed to stay up late. However, I can remember that for the game against Poland I could not rouse myself, despite Dad coming into my room and trying to persuade me to get out of bed. As England scored 3 goals I was sad to have missed the action. I do remember spending a lot of time in the park emulating the teams of '86. I also remember trying to watch the final through a crowd of people on a cross channel ferry.

I have tried to interest my daughter in the tournament, but she is really only interested in the flickering light of the television, so does not care if it is Togo v France or Springwatch. I imagine that until she shows an interest in televised football there may be many interruptions to World Cup viewing - how many fathers catch ten minutes "here or there"?

The urge to crawl remains strong, but as yet there is no forward propulsion. There will be a time when I shall look back on my daughter's stasis fondly, I am sure.

Baby + 214

Dear Daughter

You are learning to crawl. This is a source of pride for your parents. I can tell, however, that it is a cause of frustration for you. Crawling is taking a long time to master, and when you can see exactly where you want to go it is upsetting not to be able to get there. But this is an inevitable condition of existence, and I think it beneficial you should encounter an obstacle early in life. As Nietzsche said, "That which does not kill us makes us stronger."

If you could understand me I might try and persuade you that thumping the carpet would not help you to get from A to B (assuming it is B you wish to reach). Tears will not be much use either. But both are quite natural responses were any of us to find ourselves in the ideal crawling position without forward momentum.

You have, of course, learnt to crawl backwards. It is an odd human tendency to suppose that going backward has less merit than going forward. This is because we are not as a species all that imaginative at times, and our simplistic faith in the notion of progress compels us to suppose that we move forward into the future. As you grow older you will realise that our desire to categorise in this way leads us to do some odd things, such as calling some plants flowers and other weeds, and discarding the latter. Sadly and regrettably we sometimes do this about other humans, and this has often led people to hurt others. I hope you learn that this is wrong and teach others the same.

So I am proud that you have started crawling, and it does not worry me in the slightest that it is what convention would hold to be a crawl. (You will come to understand that your father does not have much time for conventions if they are plain silly or wrong.) What matters to me is that you have propulsion; and, importantly, you travel under your own steam.

You are trying to speak too, although it is perhaps nonsensical to call it such as you have no sense that this is what you are trying to do. Naturally I am proud as punch that you are saying "Dad-da" at regular intervals - at least that is what I hear (vanity precludes any other conclusion). I wouldn't want to contrast this unfavourably with the paucity of "Mo-ma" references, but I have noticed a discrepancy. Such judgement in one so young is admirable.

This is my letter to you on your 7 month anniversary. In two months time you will have been alive longer outside the womb than in. I find this profoundly moving, and I realise how fortunate we are to have you here with us.

With love from your father.