Bragging Rights

Bragging about anything baby-related seems kind of hubristic to me. Like copper-plating oneself before going out in a thunderstorm. Every time we've said 'oh, she's so lovely, very calm', F will usually erupt into a volley of fox-like shrieking within ten minutes or so to prove us wrong. Similarly, if we've ever said she's got a temper, she bathes whoever we've made the claim to with a basalm of smiling.

She likes making us look like delusional liars, I guess.

All the same, I can't help wanting to brag a little bit this week. F is maintaining her high rate of learning, which this week seems mostly to be object-related. She manipulates things, really really concentrates on picking them up and putting them down and turning them round, waving them around carefully like a wizard with an experimental wand. All whilst focussing intently on how her fingers and wrists move.

She's worked out that things dropped from the table go to the floor, so when she hurls insert any given object here to the ground, she looks after it to check it's trajectory. As though she can't quite trust gravity is still working. She needs more proof.

I'm tentatively giving her access to her plates and cutlery. I wouldn't brag about the results of that, it generally earns me a healthy coating of fruit puree or a good workout for my knees and lower back as I crawl amidst the table legs looking for her spoon. But she gets the overall shape of the expected performance one gives with them, even if she's just roughly approximating the choreography. I can appreciate that, it's all I ever managed in musicals.

No, this week has seen only one thing I want to brag about. She's been quite the last few days, as we're trying out a slightly new and improved routine. Some of the squalling is along the 'hang on, we're supposed to do this now, what are you playing at?' lines.

Some of it is because we aren't putting her to bed quickly enough.

Babies, I was led to believe, cry when you put them into their beds. Then you stand next to the cot, cajoling and pleading in whatever form you mistakenly believe will work, until they've broken your body and spirit. At which point they can rest happy, leaving you sobbing on the changing mat. F has done her fair share of that earlier on this year.

But now, she gets angry and shouty until you put her down. Not just tiredness, the eye-rubbing and grouchiness that comes with that. This is a different kind of yelling, much more pointed, like the kind when you don't let her eat your spaghetti or close the iPad when she's using it. 'I've had enough of your nonsense! Take me to bed now!' seems closer to what she's telling us.

Great, right? Miracle baby. Plus she sleeps for ten or twelve hours every night at least, as well as long afternoon naps. Smug smug braggity smug.

Obviously we're looking at webpages called things like 'babies who oversleep' and 'early onset narcolepsy - a parent's guide', and both pretending we aren't. 16 hours a day is well within normal limits (isn't it? isn't it?), so it's all fine. We're fine. Nothing to worry about here. No sir! Just move right along, let someone else see our somniac prodigy.

I get the distinct impression F is actually just lying under her blanket half the night, sniggering to herself. Try and comb the tangles out of my hair? Take this new parental worry! Tee hee hee.