Ah, the toddling age.
We're on the brink, now. F toddles round the flat, bourne aloft on the trembling wings of a giggling Pappa. More and more she shakes me off, rather preemptorily. Then she falls over.
It's not nice to say 'I told you so' to a 9-month-old baby. By which I mean it's not a very kind thing to do, being able to say 'I told you so' to anyone is always kind of fun. Gather your little pleasures in life where you will, say I.
As we're about to move house, everything is sort of half-boxed at the moment. V was firmly restating our avowed intent to make sure the new place is properly childproofed. For the sake of making this a better story, I shall claim that as we were having this conversation, we were interrupted by a cry of childish glee (I think it actually happened during an attempt to clean the breakfast things up or something far less apt). Looking round, we saw F had discovered how to open the kitchen drawers, and was wielding something bright and bladed as though about to grant herself sight beyond sight.
This is a most unfair tendency of babies. Well, our baby, I shouldn't generalise. She learns stuff on the side and then suddenly presents you with a fait accompli. Trying to stay a step ahead of her is like playing a game of chess with someone who's very abruptly decided you're actually having a kung-fu match and counters your rusty Sicilian Defence with a well-swung guan dao.
The bladed implement turned out to be something fairly blunt and innocuous, honed to a razor edge merely by our imaginations. The kitchen drawers clearly needed something slotted through them to keep them closed. I was thinking broom handle, but V got a glint in her eye and went rummaging round in one our cupboards.
It is indicative of the kind of household we run that our child-proof lock is a medieval broadsword. In its scabbard, of course, we're not monsters.
Breaking Spoon Developments - F can now use a smurf as a spoon. Not an actual spoon, of course, just smurfs. Slow progress is still progress.
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