Prodigy

It's early evening. V is next door, watching tv on the laptop. I'm sitting on the sofa with F, rocking her to sleep and humming to her. She likes singing to go to sleep to. She requests it by grunting insistently until you produce a tune she can humph along to.

Tonight, I'm singing 'Lille Katt', which is an Astrid Lindgren song. I don't know many of the words, and the ones I do know get a bit approximate, so I've switched to humming after a few repetitions. It's a very repetitive song, so I'm not really paying attention any more.

Then I notice that she's actually grunting in time with me.

If I sing 'lille katt', she sings 'nnnn nnn nnnn' with exactly the same timing. Maybe it's a fluke? I stop and start again, and after a couple of false starts, she tunes in again. She can only do the first two lines, she stops or gets lost on the third. But it's clearly deliberate, even through the optimistic goggles of fatherhood.

Obviously this means I have to run round the flat bragging about my incredibly intelligent daughter and trying to get her to demonstrate for mummy, which fails because she gets audience shy and stops doing it.

But it still happened. Not five months yet and she can keep time! I am wild with pride. I'm not over-reacting, this must be how Mozart's parents felt. Before he started composing canons about arse-licking, of course. Give her time.

Christening III - Finale

Cut back to the actual day of the Christening.

With about an hour to go, everything remains... fraught. V is still in hospital, although her lift is on the way. She's calling every few minutes, because there is still no key to the room we've booked. I pity the woman who's number is in the emails, because she's getting called only slightly more often than I am right now.

F is now awake and hungry; I've run out of pre-bottled food for her, because I thought V would already be here to feed in person. The rest of us have food now, which is something at least. V's mum has stayed up most of the previous night preparing smörgåstårtor*, cupcakes and cookies, and it's all just arrived with V's sister. There are hand-painted fondant teddy bears. This is both amazing and unbearable (editing note - no pun intended, I swear), because such glory should not be served in a community hall kitchen, as may yet occur.

At least the weather hasn't taken an abrupt turn for the worse. No, it's stayed formidably sultry and hot. How helpful.

As has been occurring all weekend, people keep turning up and offering to help. Everyone has been incredible. I actually start feeling bad that there isn't more anyone can do. I know myself that feeling of frustrated uselessness when you want to pitch in and can't. Now I'm spreading that around. It doesn't relieve the tension any.

With only half an hour to go, V arrives.  Other than being a bit flushed, you wouldn't know she's come straight from an acute admissions ward. She's masterfully disguised her drip connectors with pearls. But if she tries to do more than stand still, then she gets terribly breathless. I sympathetically respond to her arrival by hurling our daughter into her arms for a feed and then rushing out of the room to go and meet the priest over the road in church.

"Hej, sorry I'm late, no need to panic but my wife is ill and she's just come from hospital but it's all okay, we're going ahead but we might be running five or ten minutes late!" I tell the priest, who looks appropriately impressed.

And then takes it all entirely in his stride, explains things to the verger and organist, and sends me back to collect everyone. I run back over the road. I'm glad I'm in a kilt. It makes me look even more wildly unkempt and out-of-control than my (currently ridiculously shaggy) hair (for a role) does normally. Not that this is an entirely normal situation.

Except that then it is! More or less, give or take pneumonia and the oppressive weather. Somebody nice, not the woman who was supposed to, has turned up with a key for the room. Our two familes are setting up chairs, tables and gigantic platters of cookies with well-drilled calm. F has been fed and seems... rested? Well, no, more interested in why so many exciting people are carrying plates of delicious goodies about, but not squalling.

We all go over to the church. There's a bit of a panic in the vestry, where F needs to be changed into her christening dress and then decides she doesn't want to let Godfather B carry her in (even though she's been flirting happily with him all weekend). This last minute fluster is nearly the stalk that paralyses the camel. But our priest takes charge, makes swift decisions and moves us into place.

And off we go.

In what seems like about fifteen seconds through the reversed telescope of memory, we're back in the church hall, surrounded by opened presents, the incredible food either eaten or parcelled out for relatives to take away, the guests happy and leaving. It's rather surreal.

But it was a delightful success, after the kaleidoscopic jumble of the preparation.

Today turns out to have been Pentecost. In Sweden, this is called Pingst, which sounds faintly like the patron saint of penguins to me. The gospel of the day, dealing with the gifts of tongues and the multiculturalism of the good news, is very fitting, and the service is very simple but very touching for it. And although (as when we married) the reception afterwards is a blur in which we don't get to adequately meet, talk to or thank everyone enough. V doesn't even get to eat a cupcake before she has to go back to the ward, which is about the only disappointment of the day.

I feel very relieved, standing in the now-empty hall. Without my family (step and original) and friends here, this would have been an utter nightmare. It makes me very glad to know F's Godparents are so capably reliable. It's also another testament to how much V and I have to live up to in terms of parenting ourselves.

But we wouldn't have coped as well as we did without being very well-raised. We're doing alright, I reckon. Touch wood, we're doing alright.


*That's a giant savoury sandwich cake, for those who don't know. Imagine all your favourite sandwiches piled up and bound together by extra slices of ham, brie and smoked salmon. It's exactly as good as it sounds. A dream made flesh for me personally, although I'm sure experiences vary with your love of sandwiches. 

Christening - Part II

It's the night before the christening, about 0300.

I don't know many single parents. One or two, amongst my circle of friends, but I don't know them well. Most of the families I know are settled, stable ones, at least as far as I'm aware. For the last four months, V and I have done pretty much everything together with V. Bathtimes are a dual operation. Like clockwork, she feeds F, I burp her.

Not tonight. It's just me tonight.

It was just me last night too. F has been exemplary, as usual. Eating formula milk without protesting, happily sleeping through between nine and five. Giggling and chuckling on her sheepskin when doing neither of those. So why am I so terrified?

There are moments, like the two a.m. minor disaster last night when I melted a plastic bottle top on to one of the cooker's hobs and flooded the flat with the stench of burning chemicals, that I know wouldn't happen if my wife was here.

I don't have enough hands. Everything must be planned several steps further in advance than I usually bother with. The milk must be made in advance, and then set to warm while I change nappies, otherwise F has to wait on being fed. She gets frustrated then quickly frighteningly furious if that happens. You cannot carry a screaming baby near pans of boiling water. Bathing her singlehanded is really tough, she won't relax and fights against me, trying to struggle free so she can try and drown herself.

Even normally, when I carry F round the flat, parts of my stomach clench when I pass the chairs round the dining room table. They have such solid, angular corners. What if I slipped just here, I think with horror, and she fell just so, bang! That would be it.

Those shuddering parts of my stomach are entirely knotted tonight. If I was a health insurance salesman, I would always call at three in the morning. Kick the worried when they're down, you know. They'd agree to any crazy premium. I'd be rich. Also a bastard.

My parents are here for the weekend, thankfully, as are Godfather B and my excellent friend JM. So all day I've been able to stay relatively calm and relaxed, playing the genial host and gladly allowing them to buy me food or help tidy and clean around F.

When I'm not rushing up to the hospital, that is. The minute I'm on the tram, all the relaxed geniality sloughs off me like snakeskin, revealing the pale, trembly creature beneath. No wonder people give up their seats for me.

Am I striking enough notes of deadly panic yet? Read back over the last two blogs, my wife is strikingly absent from them. She is not here right now. I don't know when she'll be back. Because it's 0300, I have to admit to myself that I don't even know if she will be. How long can I keep up the facade I've managed all day for my guests, if I have to?

Forever?

Okay, that's enough.

Those of you who were there already know how much of a drama queen I'm being. I just like to share the terror a little. V was hospitalised with pneumonia temporarily. Whilst the ward staff happily waived visiting hour restrictions so that F could continue breast-feeding, she couldn't stay on the ward with her mum overnight. Hence my brief burst of single parenting, which has made me several things: -

1. Aware that I could, in a pinch, probably just about manage it, at least for a while
2. Extremely glad I don't have to, to an almost lunatic degree
3. Realise that all those comedy scenes in the Simpsons or Family Guy where the Dad is left to care for the family alone for a few hours and there's instant knee-deep rubbish all through the house, unwashed children in torn clothes and a fridge empty of everything except crumpled beer cans are, in fact, not remotely funny. Instead, they are (in the words of the blurb on the back of the video case of almost every lame sci-fi movie of the eighties) 'a nightmare reality set in the not-too-distant future'

Luckily, three in the morning only comes once a day. The rest of the time, I think I cope pretty well, all things considered. Because really, that's the only option. F needs parenting. I must provide, regardless of circumstance, confidence or ability. Like a harpoon through the chest, that steely truth is what draws me on through these frantic few days.

Christening - Part I

It's Sunday morning. The christening, which has been about three months in the planning, is going to start in just over two hours. I am at Haga Kyrkan, the church V and I were married in. Any moment now, a well-organised army of relatives bearing various cakes will arrive to set up for the party in the church hall after the service.

The church hall is locked. Nobody answers the door when I ring. I don't have the number for the office. My wife is getting ready elsewhere; this is down to me. Me and my grasp of emergency Swedish.

The weather remains hot, thunderous and potentially violent, just like Aftonbladet predicted.

There are two possible outcomes (three, if you allow for the outside chance of a punch-up round the font). Either I manage to sort this out and it all goes swimmingly. Or I screw up my daughter's christening because instead of improving my Swedish daily for the last three months, I have, instead, not.

Taking a deep breath, I head into the church. There is a beggar of middle Eastern extraction, optimistically clutching a polystyrene cup on the church steps. She is surrounded by rice from yesterday's wedding. She can't be all that hungry, a uncharitable part of my brain suggests. She could be picking it up.

Inside, there is a service about to start. The white-robed choir girls standing in the entry hall are amused by my kilt, but I sweep by them purposefully. The church is decorated with pale wood and green painted trimmings; I head for the vestry.

"Ershekta mey," I enunciate in my best Swinglish, "Yaag surker fer clé pour la samlingshuset. Kan ni hyelpa mey?"

Once we've establish that Clé is the French for key, rather than the Nyckel I'm looking for, everything works out. Sort of, at least. The choir mistress lets me into the church hall, but the room we've booked is definitely locked, and she says there isn't going to be anyone here today to open it. I mark this resolution 5/10, mainly for effort, but write 'must try harder. See me' in its margin.

The christening will now begin in an hour and a half.

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Bit of a hectic weekend, this one! F had her christening. There are of course many stories and anecdotes to be told regarding this, and I shall type them up over the next week or so.

Right now, though, I'm too tired. A little scene-setting, perhaps, but I need sleep in the immediate future.

It's been a scorching marathon weekend in Göteborg. This isn't a metaphor, it was a literal marathon weekend. All the hotels were full of the kind of lycra-loving idiots who enjoy running umpteen miles on the year's hottest day so far, complete with thunderstorms. The local free papers were full of ominous summer headlines like 'The Year's Most Violent Weekend'. Because of the sweaty weather? Or because you couldn't cross the street without a jogger knocking you down? It didn't say.

At one point, I found myself on a tram, heading off to do some Christening admin stuff with Freja by myself. The tram was packed, mostly with healthy young people in the hotpants everyone in Sweden immediately changes into once the temperature rises above five degrees. No seats anywhere.

A couple of months ago, a heavily pregnant friend of ours bemoaned Swedish commuter manners. Nobody offered her a seat. She was met with downcast eyes and wilful blindness everywhere she turned. No points for you, Sweden, a poor showing.

To make up for it, as I arrived on the tram, no less than three willowy youths leapt out of their seats to offer me theirs. I don't know what to make of this. Weekenders are more polite than commuters? Or just that a bearded man with a baby bjorn looked much less competent than an eight-month-pregnant lady?

I think I should worry about my appearance at the moment.

Chompy

I've been increasingly over-excited at the thought of giving F her first taste of solid food. She turned four months old yesterday, which is the minimum age the internet seems to say is allowed. V was sensibly sticking to this, despite me spending every breakfast for the last three weeks saying helpful things like "oh go on, give her a ham sandwich and a coffee, what harm can it do?"

I got V to cave in one day early, in the end. No mean feat, convincing my wife to ignore conventional health advice. I should start working for the tobacco lobby.

So on Monday, F got her first taste of banana. A tiny slice, mashed fine and offered up in a blue plastic spoon. It went down pretty well, too, after a slightly resistant start. Usually the spoon brings the only other taste she knows, that of vitamin D drops, popular as any medicine. Okay, she does know various other flavours, I suppose. But Plastic Caterpillar and Furry Elephant Blanket don't really count, any more than Daddy's Arm does.

Banana was approved. She did start crying, but only when we took the spoon out to refill it. This bodes well, I think. The signs that she's interested in food are there to see. She likes the cornflake packet, because it's red and rustles. Her favourite line of 'This little piggy went to market' isn't the tickling finale, it's the one about roast beef. Well, specifically the bit where the one of the little piggies gets none. That always gets a chuckle. Quite the Tory, my daughter.

We'd already bought a couple of pots of baby goo from the supermarket in advance of first feeding, a carrot one and a mango one (colours interchangeable). Mango got sceptical eyebrows from Mormor and Aunty M, who said sweet foods like that weren't a good choice to start with. V was delighted - apparently there was a fruit puree one that used to be her favourite. She used to snack off it when she was feeding her younger brothers. So she thought waste not want not, and tucked into the mango paste with a spoon.

Not good stuff. I tried it as well. It tastes more of the rice starch padding it out than actual mango, I reckon. Hopefully F will take after my rather more eclectic feeding habits than V's (who won't eat meatloaf but will eat meatballs made from the same mince mix, because it, er, there's, er, I don't know). I'm optimistic, as she can happily spend an hour gnawing the face of a stuffed rabbit at the moment. If that mango stuff is anything to go by, I can see why.

Crunch Time

F is starting to sit up.

When she lies in her little bouncy sling chair, she instantly starts trying to do unsupported Pilates-style stomach crunch things. Then she holds them, peering round the room with her brow furrowed in effort. She balls her fists up and clutches for support in her own armpits. It looks like she's parachuting. It's very impressive

It made me think - it's been a while since I did much exercise. Maybe I should take inspiration from my daughter, and start doing a few crunches of my own. So I thought I'd exercise along with her. When I'm in the routine of it, I do a bit of mixed yoga and Pilates of a day. I'm quite proud of my headstands. But it's been a few months since I was in that routine.

This became instantly and depressingly obvious when I failed to keep up with more than three of F's reps. I am officially less fit than a four-month-old baby. In the limited field of stomach muscles, at least. And I was doing full Pilates crunches, not her version. And come on, I can't be that out of shape. Out of the two of us, who can stand up longer? Go on, F, I challenge you to a standing up contest. Then we'll see.

But the very fact I need to start defensively qualifying this defeat speaks volumes. Now that she generally sleeps most of the night (regularly getting six or seven hour blocks in) and I have a little more energy back, I have some self-improvement to get on with. Not least because I'm doing stage fighting again. Nothing worse than a piece of dramatic combat where the tension comes from wondering if the combatant's heart is about to give out.

More on this soon - today has been rather fraught, as V and I tried to spring clean the flat. F decided we weren't paying her enough attention, focussing instead on mundane chores, and had a full-on screaming tantrum when nobody picked her up on demand. She's been testing us since, checking that it was a one-off lapse that doesn't need further action on her part to correct.

I've seen her corrective action. She has an arch over her sling chair, from which hang various stuffed toys. The middle one, a Simpsons Yellow chap with a red nose and terrible haircut, responds to gentle tapping by playing a tune. F hasn't quite mastered this gentle tapping, she's often a bit too gentle. But she knows something is supposed to happen when she bats him around, and she gets very very angry very quickly if her efforts are unrewarded.

She found something that works the other day though. If she holds him by both arms and knees him hard in the crotch, he plays the tune. I don't know what kind of lessons these toys are teaching her, but I fear them nevertheless.

Going Without

We went to a wedding yesterday.

This involved a certain amount of planning (as weddings do, really). We booked Mormor to babysit, we spent two days collecting enough milk to last F for 24 hours and then saturday morning fretting over what clothes to wear.

Three and a half months in, and we're acclimatised to baby. Quite severely. It's like altitude. Change too quickly and you get breathless and dizzy. For me, it meant feeling a mild but uncomfortable chill as though I'd just taken a warm jumper off on a cold day. V said she felt wound tight, a clockwork motor deprived of the toy it drives.

F was, of course, perfectly happy with the idea. She got to spend time being pampered by Mormor, Aunty M and both her Swedish cousins. As we trekked grimly off to the bus, clutching each other with bereaved expressions of remorse, Aunty M sent a photo of F giving her largest, most Anime half-moon smile. If you're going to leave your baby with someone, it shouldn't get more reassuring than an experienced midwife who lives next to a hospital. But you try telling yourself that.

The wedding was great, in a tiny church from the middle ages on Hisingen. White plaster walls with frescos of saints, and an altar piece with medieval cherubs that looked like winged Barbie dolls. Lots of V's friends from the Opera, beautiful singing during the ceremony, a very cheerful reception at a slightly battered church hall. The walls had photos of the Swedish equivalent of Rotary clubs, displays of wooden beer steins, 1950s-looking hand-crocheted blankets and yellowing notices for the local chess club.

I had a mild heart attack when it turned out the seating would be random. We drew tickets on the way in, I would be nowhere near my wife. There was only one solution. It was light, golden, fizzy and being served from a punch bowl by the door.

Being drunk helps my language skills. In my own perception, at least. Less shy, more willing to offer up a botchy sentence and let other people worry about what I meant. I've previously found that if I don't have my wife to hide behind, I can speak a reasonable amount of crude Swedish. My table neighbours were quite happy not to speak English, I was determined not to let myself, and it all worked out well. Actual conversations were achieved.

I got through most of the rest of the evening in Swedish. It's like magic, discovering you can understand what someone is saying even though it's not your mother tongue. As though you have enchanted ears, although that comes with a sense of distrust, as though they will revert to pumpkins at any minute.

V calmed down pretty quickly, although I swiped her phone so she couldn't call up 'just to check'. We had a really good time, although one I found lightly tainted with a double sense of guilt. One that I was enjoying myself without my daughter around. How dare I! What a poor father! Which is nonsense, of course. The other wasn't guilt, exactly, but a guilty desire that F would be raising hell with Mormor, so bereft of her beloved parents was she.

We went home fairly early, because we were tired and because the lure of a whole night of undisturbed sleep was like a gigantic candle to our moth-like bodies. It didn't happen, naturally.

First, the breast pump genie took one look at nine hour's worth of deposits and took early retirement, breaking almost as soon as switched on. Once V had finished dealing with that particular marathon, both of us took it in turns to wake up every few hours, wondering why our baby was so alarmingly quiet. Because she's several miles away, you silly fools.

The corollary is that F had an entirely splendid time without us, drat her. Ever wise to the value of good PR, she played happily with both cousins, ate heartily and then slept through for seven hours. When we picked her up in the morning, she seemed far more interested in continuing to chat with Mormor than going home with her boring old föräldrar. This all seems wildly healthy and encouraging, if faintly disappointing that she didn't seem to miss us in any way. Ah well, plenty of time for that later.

Coming to a West End near you

Mistress of the House

Yelling like a cat

Wants to drink your coffee

But she can't have that

Vomits in your beard

Vomits down your back

Vomits on the laundry 

And the CD rack

Everything now smells of vomit

Unless it smells of wee or poo.

If you think she's cranky now,

Just wait until she reaches two. 

-

Here was where I'd put my Oscar

Where this squeaky toy now lies

These are diapers, not Pulitzers,

Dummies, not a Nobel Prize.

I was going to write a novel

I was going to clean the flat

Or just put a cleaner shirt on

But there isn't time for that 

For there's something more important

Than the dreams I used to dream

Baby chairs and changing tables

Where my furniture has been

- 

Sleep

I vaguely remember

The slumbering hours

I used to enjoy

Not any more

Now I stand rocking

And pacing the bedroom

And cheerily wiggling

This damn cuddly toy

This damn cuddly toy

Why can't you sleep? This is night!

That's what it's for, don't you know?

If I sing 'rockabye baby' once more

Then I think I will go

And throw myself 

off a bridge

Like Russell Crowe

- 

Red!

The colour of my eyes!

Black!
The coffee that I drink!

Loud!

The timbre of her cries!

Brown!

The nappy's potent stink!

-

Do you hear your baby scream?

Screaming at four o' clock a.m.

It's the screaming of a baby

Who has woken up again!

Though the pounding in your head

Feels like an angry rhino's tread

You're going clean your baby's bum

'Til tomorrow comes!