Baby + 179
Er, I have been lazy. Two and a bit weeks have gone by since the last blog update, and yet so much has happened. I'll give you some headlines:
1. Our daughter is on the verge of being able to crawl. She finds her inability to propel herself very frustrating. If she had any chance of understanding the difference between the short and long view, I'd tell her not to be worried that it all isn't clicking now.
2. Hair. She came with hair, she lost most of that hair, but now it is returning. As hair changes our perception of other people, I am pondering whether her follical growth will add to the sense that she is less the baby and more the little person.
3. Noise. Wow. Progress or what? Mrs M thinks our daughter is a regular user of the word "Mamma". I am less sure, but there has been an amazing expansion in her vocal spectrum. It is clear that these noises are linked directly to her emotional state. My favourite is the wheezy yawn and accompanying roll of the head.
4. Diet. After months of milk - mother's and mass-produced - our daughter now consumes avocado, sweet potato, paw paw, banana, and carrot. Much of this carefully prepared food ends up on her bib, clothes, or her parents' clothes. However, I sense that she appreciates the new variety in her diet.
5. Sleep. I am loathe to add this to the list - unecessary superstition, but superstition nonetheless - but there has been a big change in our daughter's sleeping habits. Yes, she still wakes for a feed at 10pm, but she sometimes makes it from this feed to the dawn chorus. Bliss.
If there were any doubt that we are bourgeoise parents through and through, our holiday in Dorset and Wiltshire is proof positive. I can't think that being pushed across England's footpath in a pram is relaxing, but we have a rather simplistic assumption that time spent in our bucolic countryside is intrinsocally good. So, without our daughter's consent we marched her across this beautiful area, lifting her across stiles, and pulling her backwards across fields full of cows and their two-dimensional waste. The health benefits are immeasuarble.
Dorest and Wiltshire were good places to be as we learned that the nation is being terrorised by foreign criminals. (Technically, I suppose, said foreigners are foreign, but may only be foreign criminals if they had a criminal record from another jursidiction.) As respectable householders up and down the country locked their doors for fear that Johnny Frog or Fritz might seek to make off with a kitchen applicance, we were faced with nothing more taxing than illegal parking (by others) in Shaftesbury. This is a small town, with narrow streets, and if anyone does park on a double yellow line (no red routes here...yet) it is a source of great frustration to other road users, particularly buses. Fortunately the offenders were Anglo and Saxon in origin, so there was no danger that anyone smelling vaguely of garlic or cabbage would be dragged from their Xantia and beaten senseless by the good burghers of Dorset.
I am waiting for someone to suggest that we expel rabbits - which are, of course, not native to these islands - for centuries of criminal damage. Rabbits and Daily Mail readers would be first on my boat for the exiled.
1. Our daughter is on the verge of being able to crawl. She finds her inability to propel herself very frustrating. If she had any chance of understanding the difference between the short and long view, I'd tell her not to be worried that it all isn't clicking now.
2. Hair. She came with hair, she lost most of that hair, but now it is returning. As hair changes our perception of other people, I am pondering whether her follical growth will add to the sense that she is less the baby and more the little person.
3. Noise. Wow. Progress or what? Mrs M thinks our daughter is a regular user of the word "Mamma". I am less sure, but there has been an amazing expansion in her vocal spectrum. It is clear that these noises are linked directly to her emotional state. My favourite is the wheezy yawn and accompanying roll of the head.
4. Diet. After months of milk - mother's and mass-produced - our daughter now consumes avocado, sweet potato, paw paw, banana, and carrot. Much of this carefully prepared food ends up on her bib, clothes, or her parents' clothes. However, I sense that she appreciates the new variety in her diet.
5. Sleep. I am loathe to add this to the list - unecessary superstition, but superstition nonetheless - but there has been a big change in our daughter's sleeping habits. Yes, she still wakes for a feed at 10pm, but she sometimes makes it from this feed to the dawn chorus. Bliss.
If there were any doubt that we are bourgeoise parents through and through, our holiday in Dorset and Wiltshire is proof positive. I can't think that being pushed across England's footpath in a pram is relaxing, but we have a rather simplistic assumption that time spent in our bucolic countryside is intrinsocally good. So, without our daughter's consent we marched her across this beautiful area, lifting her across stiles, and pulling her backwards across fields full of cows and their two-dimensional waste. The health benefits are immeasuarble.
Dorest and Wiltshire were good places to be as we learned that the nation is being terrorised by foreign criminals. (Technically, I suppose, said foreigners are foreign, but may only be foreign criminals if they had a criminal record from another jursidiction.) As respectable householders up and down the country locked their doors for fear that Johnny Frog or Fritz might seek to make off with a kitchen applicance, we were faced with nothing more taxing than illegal parking (by others) in Shaftesbury. This is a small town, with narrow streets, and if anyone does park on a double yellow line (no red routes here...yet) it is a source of great frustration to other road users, particularly buses. Fortunately the offenders were Anglo and Saxon in origin, so there was no danger that anyone smelling vaguely of garlic or cabbage would be dragged from their Xantia and beaten senseless by the good burghers of Dorset.
I am waiting for someone to suggest that we expel rabbits - which are, of course, not native to these islands - for centuries of criminal damage. Rabbits and Daily Mail readers would be first on my boat for the exiled.
posted by Jonathan McMahon at 7:17 PM
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