Swing

Swings are fairly safe for an eight-month-old, right? I mean, as long as you don't go nuts and start trying to get them to orbit the bar or anything. Or leave them to it while you go and get ice cream. And I'm talking the bucket seats here, that's obvious. Not the dangling tyres or the single rubber strap ones. Basically nothing that looks like it should have been on Gladiators. I'm not a monster.

I'd been tempted to give F a go on a swing for ages, but that nagging internal voice that tells you unsupervised fun is the same as bad parenting kept me from it. There was also an external voice that kept reminding me to wait until my wife wasn't at work. It wasn't a nagging voice, can I just make that very clear? She reads this blog, after all. It was a dulcet voice of kindly reason, one that I love very much.

F likes swings now. Creaky ones especially, they make a good noise. Even better than that is a creaky swing with another child in it, that's fascinating. I don't know if F is watching older kids to pick up movement tips or whether she's just trying to work out what they are. She's only recently realised things like birds and animals are at all interesting. Ducks are now hilarious, for example. Only a few weeks ago she was totally indifferent to them because Look! Leaves!

F likes most stuff, to be fair. Novel things especially, which covers pretty much everything. She doesn't generally seem to get scared or apprehensive of new stuff though, she just giggles or guffaws and tries to grab it. Worrying comes later on in development, I vaguely recall.

What bliss not to have to put up with that! As the top of my head begins its long, slow reveal through my increasingly grey-shot hair, I can't help but be a little jealous. About seventy percent of the parenting I feel I do (F does most of the hard work, learning motor functions and how the world works and all that shit. I'm basically a combination butler and pack mule, really) seems to be telling myself not to panic.

Not worrying is, for me, a learnt skill, the kind that I have to concentrate quite hard to maintain. Perhaps it will become automatic over time, the way that anything does with daily practice. Nothing in my experience or the many other parents I know seems to suggest this is the case, however. Fingers crossed for graceful balding, then.