A Grim Realisation

You might have noticed from the last few posts that the baby is crying more. It’s not that bad, she never cries for no reason, usually it’s just that she is hungry or wants a cuddle. But she cries just ever so slightly too much for a nicotine fiend like me to handle with no cigarettes. So I went to Boots to buy some more nicotine gum.

I had a tuna sandwich before I went and as I was leaving the house I realised a terrible thing. I swore blind that I would not be one of these parents that lives vicariously through their kids and ends up lost when they grow up and leave home. I will never just wear clothes that are boring and practical. I’m still young and vital, I have my own life, and, OK, I might not be the snappiest dresser but the jeans are flared, I’ve got a pair of Converse on. But then this happened. As I was draining the tin of tuna I squirted it all over myself, and then just dully rubbed it into my top with a dishcloth. And that’s how I left the house. What is happening to me?

The Kid Ain't Got No Class

No she doesn’t. Ways that she has no class include sneezing and farting at the same time (she gets that from her mother who is in all other respects completely demure), pulling faces when she is having a poo and then audibly sighing with satisfaction, being sick down her chin and then rubbing it in with her fist, and liking Paul Simon.

That last one is my fault. I have been singing the Boy in the Bubble and You Can Call Me Al to her since she was born, I guess just because they were the mellowest little catchy tunes I know the words to. Remember, I’m a dad now. I’m not supposed to know what’s cool.

Anyway, over the past couple of weeks the baby has been becoming more engaged with the world around her, and she is also making a lot more noise. Each morning she wakes up bright and chirpy, I give her her morning bottle while Lynne sleeps, we read the paper and I drink coffee, and she progressively gets more grumpy with me until eventually I can’t stand the noise she is making any more and I put Graceland on. I found out quite by accident, but she loves it. She could be going absolutely apeshit, but when the drums kick in on the Boy in the Bubble, that’s it. Rapt attention. The title track seems to be her favourite, when it’s on she stretches her neck until her head is wobbling on the end of it and her mouth hangs open. This means that she actually likes my singing and wants to hear the original versions! Ha ha!

I only play her the first half of the album of course. Every tune on there is a belter. But if you ever see an old vinyl copy of Graceland, have a look at it. Side A will be all scratched to fuckery while Side B will be pristine. That’s because it’s bollocks.

Christmas Is A Time For Family

In case you hadn’t noticed Christmas is coming up. Now I like Christmas, I’m not one of these people that moan that there is too much tinsel in shops and too many adverts for Marks and Spencer’s on the telly. Fie, pish and mimsy. These things aren’t important, I’m surprised people have the energy to get worked up about them. For me the important things about Christmas are that you don’t have to go to work and all your friends are off as well, you get to drink as much fancy booze as you want and eat loads of nice food, and people give you presents. And there are probably going to be silly hats to wear. What’s wrong with that?

This year is more complicated. Now that we have a baby the festive season has been turned into a political minefield. You see, my parents live about half an hour away but Lynne’s live in Aberdeen. If we visit my folks over the Christmas period then one set of grandparents think the others are getting special treatment. Lynne’s mum already thinks my mum is constantly round here, luxuriating in grandmotherhood while she waits bleakly by the phone for any titbits we cast her way.

Well, we are not playing that game. If we can't please everyone, we are not going to please anyone at all. We are staying in here and having our own wee Christmas, and everyone else can fuck off. Christmas is a time to be selfish.

But we can’t even win with this. Yesterday I phoned my mum. She already knew we weren’t going to her place for Christmas so the first thing she said was, ‘So, are you going to Aberdeen for Christmas?’ Pretty innocuous you may think, but there was a definite tone. ‘Hell no!’ was my instant reply, but its not enough. My mum, being of a naturally suspicious demeanour, thinks I’m part of a conspiracy to make Lynne’s mum into Grandmother Number One. The fact that I’m still pissed off with Lynne’s mum for the way she behaved when the baby was born is obviously a cover to hide the depth of the conspiracy. My mum snidely mentions that she was surprised to get a Christmas card from Lynne’s folks after their last phone conversation. She just can’t resist stirring it.

We have to nip this bullshit in the bud. I’m not running round after everyone else for the rest of my life. For Christ’s sake, she’s my daughter! It’s not about you guys at all!

Anyway, yesterday we put up the Christmas decorations. Yay! The baby is unimpressed with it all. I suppose the whole thing sort of passes you by when you are six weeks old. At least we won’t have to get her any presents, she won’t know the difference. Lynne has been writing Christmas cards round the clock. About 4pm I made some coffee to go with my last piece of nicotine gum. Lynne had some coffee too. This turned out to be a schoolboy error. Once the baby had supped from the caffeiney breast she was up all night, her arms and legs working as if she was miming a marathon runner. She hollered for hours and with no nicotine in my system I had a hard time keeping a lid on my stress levels. When I changed her she farted while the nappy was off and sprayed guacamole coloured poo over my legs. Then she looked really pleased with herself and said ‘Ung!’ She has no class at all.

Prams and That

This week we have been taking the baby outside for wee danders about the shops. We have taken her out before, Lynne has even taken her as far as Braehead, but since we have a variety of conveyances for the child and we have pretty much used them all in the past couple of days, I thought I would talk some shit about them, compare them and that. Score them out of ten and the like.

My daughter is pretty underwhelmed by the whole experience of going outside. Its December, its cold, so we bundle her up and she sleeps the whole time. We swore blind that we wouldn’t be the kind of parents that dressed their kid up as an animal but someone gave us a furry snowsuit, with little ears on the hood and the mitts made to look like paws, which the baby looks ridiculous in. We can’t resist. Also, the suit is so cosy that just putting her in it knocks her out. It’s almost instantaneous. It’s a shame we have to take it off her.

Anyway, conveyance number one. The Premaxx Baby Bag. This is a Swedish sling thing with pockets and what have you all over it and it looks the business. Ours is orange and deep red. It goes over one shoulder and you slot the baby in and she hangs across your chest as if she’s in a hammock. It has draw toggles that you have to play with and you need to twist the strap on your shoulder origami style so it takes a couple of goes to work out what to do with it, but the baby looks really snug in there once you have figured it out. Its handy for short trips, you can go into shops that it would be a fight to get a pram into, but since all the weight is on one shoulder, it starts to get a bit sore after a while. I wouldn’t like to walk for miles with it on.

Score: 7/10 great for short trips, a bit complicated and sore on the old shoulder.

Conveyance number two. The Baby Bjorn. This is the same idea as the sling thing, but is more of a rucksack affair with the baby sitting upright on your chest. The straps go over both your shoulders so you can for a bit further with it on before it starts to get too heavy, but I prefer the sling for a couple of reasons. First, the sling looks better. The Baby Bjorn looks like a boring piece of hiking equipment, which gives me the matching-waterproofs horrors. It has a neck support for babies that are too small to hold their own heads up, but this only works if the baby remains motionless, if she tries to have a look around or even falls asleep it makes her head loll around alarmingly. Lastly, the one we have got is second-hand, and I don’t like the idea of putting my daughter into something that someone else has already shat in.

Score: 4/10 functional, boring, and baby can’t even really sleep in it.

Which brings us to conveyance number three, the trusty pram. We have a Mamas and Papas Pliko pramette. I will probably dicuss prams in disparaging detail in a further post, but for now we chose this one because it’s small lightweight and simple, with a cracking turning circle and no pedometer or any of that silly shit. This beast can go for miles. It can carry a formidable amount of shopping in the undercarriage, but be careful with this because it affects the steering. Remember if you pack loads of shit in your pram you still have to push it home. Out of the three methods of transportation this is the one with the most room for the little passenger, she will never look squished, even in a huge furry bear suit. The only problem with it is carrying up and down the stairs to the flat. It’s light but not four-flights-of-stairs light. We have left it chained up at the bottom a few times, but I don’t like doing this because I don’t want it getting manky. There are students live below us and I don’t want them coming home drunk one night and playing with it. I would end up trying to fight them in the stairwell in my underpants.

Score: 9/10 can’t be beaten on range and payload, but it’s a pain in the arse when you live on the top floor.

Quote of the Day

Lynne asked my mum what she wanted the baby to call her. My mum said

'She can call me anything she likes. Just not nan, gran or nanna, or anything like that. I'm not a goat.'

Southpaw

You know, I don’t believe in ‘cluster feeding’. I think they have just been making it up. It seems to me that as the baby gets bigger, she needs more milk but Lynne’s boob is always the same size.

I think the baby is going to be left-handed. It’s the side she favours. As Lynne cradles the baby’s head and moves her mouth towards the nipple, the baby curls her right arm across her chest in a classic guard posture and swings wildly for Lynne’s face with her left fist.

The Baby Grew Up While I was Out

I should have known better than to take on the assistant vice principal on his own turf. It was the last day of the survey today, and he played a blinder. I can only shake my head in admiration. What he did was this; about 10am he put a sign on his office door saying MEETING IN PROGRESS. DO NOT DISTURB. Then some time around midday he went home, leaving the sign on his door. I didn’t realise there was nobody in his office until 2pm. I have no way of knowing how many people were in the meeting, when they were there, and when the office was empty. I have no numbers for that room all day.

Ha ha! I salute his raw cunning and if I had to be outwitted by anyone I am glad it was him. But I don’t really care. I am finished, and I will get paid all the same.

They say a watched pot never boils, and my daughter seems to have grown a personality while I have been out. She looks up at me and smiles when I come in, a big toothless smile that transforms her into a little person. When I left for work on Monday she was still an inert lump that would just lie there, staring into space and blinking. It's surprising how much she has come out of herself in so short a space of time. There are other changes too. She has decided that she is no longer willing to sit about in a dirty nappy. She now tells us if she needs to be changed. She also likes to shout; as I was changing her she was grinning, kicking her legs and saying ‘MAAUUGH!’ This is the start of conversation. She is more aware of the world around her and will gaze in wonder at a rattle or a stuffed zebra that squeaks, where she showed no interest before. I can’t wait until she starts to laugh.

But I don’t think I have missed anything. Things I might have missed are her first trip to Braehead, an epic journey on the bus that Lynne took her on yesterday. The furthest I have been with the baby so far is Partick Library, but more on the outside experience in a later post. Today she hawked up her first loogie. Apparently she sneezed up a huge ball of snot and Lynne didn’t keep it for me to see. Babies born by c-section are a bit more mucusy for the first few weeks because they haven’t been wrung out in the mangle of vaginal birth.

Anyway, now that I am officially unemployed again we can get back into the old routine.