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.