F had her first taste of day care today. She went for a couple of hours of playing with other toddlers and near-toddlers at a local church hall. Good fun for her, I hoped, plus lots of new ideas for movement and some new toys to bash around. Her smurfs are starting to unionise, I suspect, I felt they needed a day of rest.
Being a parent makes me terribly competitive. From quite a competitive start, as well. It's not a race! I keep telling myself. Nobody is keeping track of how quickly your daughter grows, or when they hit milestones. Well, okay, they are, the midwife does it. But that's just quietly professional, there's not prizes or anything. Are there? There should be, is my basic instinct. And F should win them all.
The reason I mention this is that in a group of about ten children (I lost count very quickly), F was the only one there not actually walking or crawling independently. "Oh, that's fine, Valkyria/Odin* didn't start until he/she was twelve months" people kept telling me reassuringly. Except the proud mum sitting next to me, whose son was two weeks younger and leaping balletically round the mat like a young Nureyev.
The singing circle was kind of an ordeal - I knew slightly less than half of the songs. F has a CD of kids songs, some of which have osmotically embedded themselves into my brain through repetition. Not enough to do anything more than poorly and obviously lip-sync my way through the Swedish equivalent of 'Baa Baa Black Sheep', anyway. Which is 'Bä, bä, vita lamm' and has a totally different tune, just to make it even worse.
Hampered as usual by my dismal Swedish, I felt a bit gloomy by the end. Everyone else sat in the common room having fika whilst their kids romped and cavorted independently round the far end of the room. I sat with the kids, holding F up so she could play with the big plastic activity centre she wanted to grab. Lying next to it wasn't quite good enough, that made her get shouty and impatient, and whilst she's extremely close to crawling or pulling herself upright, she's a shade away from it still. So I'm still her bionic walking machine.
F had a splendid time, which was obviously more important. Other than the bit where she unexpectedly nearly stood up and faceplanted vigorously onto her nose, at least. All the other kids came and stood round me in an accusing circle, staring at F while she howled or checking back with their own parents to see if they'd learnt from my mistake. Perhaps no actual judgement was passed, I don't know, but for a moment there it felt quite Lord of the Flies. My head certainly felt at risk of being left on the handles of the inflatable rocking horse as a warning.
We're going back next week. By then, I will have taught myself the lyrics to all Swedish nursery rhymes and F will be able fly. That'll show 'em.
*Not their real names, sadly
Saturday, September 21, 2013
Friday, September 20, 2013
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.
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.
Thursday, September 19, 2013
Spoon Update
It's been well over a month of training now. F can
- Put food onto a spoon with one hand
- Take food off a spoon with one hand
- Eat food with one hand whilst holding a spoon in the other
- Hold an empty spoon and bowl and pretend to eat out of it
- Not actually combine these activities to eat with a spoon yet
The blast radius for her feeding attempts is about a foot smaller, although this merely means it's also about an inch deeper in partially-masticated goo.
This is all quite frustrating for all concerned. This probably also means it's normal.
- Put food onto a spoon with one hand
- Take food off a spoon with one hand
- Eat food with one hand whilst holding a spoon in the other
- Hold an empty spoon and bowl and pretend to eat out of it
- Not actually combine these activities to eat with a spoon yet
The blast radius for her feeding attempts is about a foot smaller, although this merely means it's also about an inch deeper in partially-masticated goo.
This is all quite frustrating for all concerned. This probably also means it's normal.
Wednesday, September 18, 2013
Nostalgia
Gosh, time goes by terribly fast. I was bouncing F on my knee the other day. She's well over two foot tall now, it's getting tougher on my knees daily. I can't really believe she's the same baby that only a handful of months ago was able to lie fully stretched out on my chest without hanging over the edges. Aww, I thought with a tint of rosy spectacle, those days are already done. I miss them!
As though to remind me of the perils of fond hinder-gazing, F immediately got her first cold and spent the entire night awake and yelling. Not aggressive or miserable yelling, just 'hey, I'm awake, let's play a game' yelling. To start with, anyway. The miserable aggression came later, once she realised that mummy and daddy weren't up for it at three in the morning.
I got her cold soon after (she'd caught it from V, who'd caught it at the theatre). I made mine much worse by doing a stage fighting gig out at a local fortress. It was lovely weather, I didn't think I need a coat. Especially as I'd be dressed in a 17th century velvet frock coat and leaping from assorted battlements, wielding a rapier. Seeing as my Swedish is still pretty lousy, I hadn't realised I'd be expected to stay on after the fight for almost four hours, standing about looking gormless as a foil for the tour guide's wit. Professionally gormless, you understand, I was acting it. The fact that said wit was also too Swedish for me to follow merely helped.
By the time I got home, I was running a fever. I didn't sleep beyond an hour that night, and that was grabbed on the sofa because I kept waking F up by sneezing in the bedroom. Luckily, F was pretty much better the following day. For her, anyway. She couldn't understand why daddy didn't want to play at three in the afternoon either, very unreasonable.
P.S. - The long pause since the last blog is partly due to this cold. It knocked me pretty flat for a week or so last month, when all this happened. I'm a terrible one for getting out of habits if I'm thrown off my routine. I'm still planning on writing something roughly once a week. I can't imagine I've left anyone horribly bereft by skipping a few weeks, but apologies if you thought we'd all been kidnapped or something. I'm back now, and I have a few catch-up blogs to make up for the pause.
As though to remind me of the perils of fond hinder-gazing, F immediately got her first cold and spent the entire night awake and yelling. Not aggressive or miserable yelling, just 'hey, I'm awake, let's play a game' yelling. To start with, anyway. The miserable aggression came later, once she realised that mummy and daddy weren't up for it at three in the morning.
I got her cold soon after (she'd caught it from V, who'd caught it at the theatre). I made mine much worse by doing a stage fighting gig out at a local fortress. It was lovely weather, I didn't think I need a coat. Especially as I'd be dressed in a 17th century velvet frock coat and leaping from assorted battlements, wielding a rapier. Seeing as my Swedish is still pretty lousy, I hadn't realised I'd be expected to stay on after the fight for almost four hours, standing about looking gormless as a foil for the tour guide's wit. Professionally gormless, you understand, I was acting it. The fact that said wit was also too Swedish for me to follow merely helped.
By the time I got home, I was running a fever. I didn't sleep beyond an hour that night, and that was grabbed on the sofa because I kept waking F up by sneezing in the bedroom. Luckily, F was pretty much better the following day. For her, anyway. She couldn't understand why daddy didn't want to play at three in the afternoon either, very unreasonable.
P.S. - The long pause since the last blog is partly due to this cold. It knocked me pretty flat for a week or so last month, when all this happened. I'm a terrible one for getting out of habits if I'm thrown off my routine. I'm still planning on writing something roughly once a week. I can't imagine I've left anyone horribly bereft by skipping a few weeks, but apologies if you thought we'd all been kidnapped or something. I'm back now, and I have a few catch-up blogs to make up for the pause.
Monday, August 19, 2013
Spoony
V read a website last week, one of those 'normal childhood development milestones' ones. They're great. One quick read provides 90% of your RDA of paranoia and fear. F was looking pretty good - bits of walking, talking, etc, plus what it referred to as 'increased levels of activity', which is certainly true. It also said 'starting to use a spoon.'
Nope, none of that. She's trained me to do it for her, more or less. But if some random website says normal children can do that by this age? Well, by God and St. George! I shall immediately commence a rapid programme of spoon training, and devil take the hindmost.
I had a simple approach - feed F about two-thirds of her usual breakfast porridge, then offer her both bowl and spoon and let her work it out.
Learning Notes
Day 1
Porridge feels good. Good on the face, good on the elbows, good on the floor.
F can now keep her baby skin smooth and soft with regular oatmeal peels.
Two metres is still inside the splash zone.
F has mastered this skill Matrix style. Yes, that's right - there is no spoon. Thank you, I'll be here all week.
Day 3
Porridge can be used like a drum.
Porridge can be used like glue.
Porridge can be used as a projectile weapon.
Porridge should not be used as porridge. That's boring.
Day 5
Sudden progress! F can now fill the spoon. Then she meticulously wipes it clean with her other hand, turns it upside down and chews the other end. Every little helps, I guess.
All the same, holding the spoon and dipping it into the porridge after a mere five days seems like a tremendous rate of progress. I don't know when she's practising between meals, but she must be slipping it in somewhere. Middle of the night, maybe? When she wakes up yowling at 0300, it may represent some new breakthrough in spoon theory. I did find porridge on her blanket this afternoon, which may prove this hypothesis. Either that, or eight metres and a wall is still inside the splash zone.
Nope, none of that. She's trained me to do it for her, more or less. But if some random website says normal children can do that by this age? Well, by God and St. George! I shall immediately commence a rapid programme of spoon training, and devil take the hindmost.
I had a simple approach - feed F about two-thirds of her usual breakfast porridge, then offer her both bowl and spoon and let her work it out.
Learning Notes
Day 1
Porridge feels good. Good on the face, good on the elbows, good on the floor.
F can now keep her baby skin smooth and soft with regular oatmeal peels.
Two metres is still inside the splash zone.
F has mastered this skill Matrix style. Yes, that's right - there is no spoon. Thank you, I'll be here all week.
Day 3
Porridge can be used like a drum.
Porridge can be used like glue.
Porridge can be used as a projectile weapon.
Porridge should not be used as porridge. That's boring.
Day 5
Sudden progress! F can now fill the spoon. Then she meticulously wipes it clean with her other hand, turns it upside down and chews the other end. Every little helps, I guess.
All the same, holding the spoon and dipping it into the porridge after a mere five days seems like a tremendous rate of progress. I don't know when she's practising between meals, but she must be slipping it in somewhere. Middle of the night, maybe? When she wakes up yowling at 0300, it may represent some new breakthrough in spoon theory. I did find porridge on her blanket this afternoon, which may prove this hypothesis. Either that, or eight metres and a wall is still inside the splash zone.
Monday, August 12, 2013
Both Ends
Freya is talking now.
Proto-talking, to be fair. Like 'Mama' does mean 'mummy', but also 'myam myam' (as in 'give me more food'), 'pick me up' and 'I'm awake, come get me.' 'Baba', which seems to denote me, also has multiple connotations. I don't think I get all of them yet. I'm also interchangable with mama, which for F's purposes is quite accurate.
It's funny, she actually first started saying 'mama' about three months ago. She said it over and over again for about two days, then totally lost interest in it and wouldn't repeat it at all, not for love nor money. We didn't actually offer her money, to be fair. Maybe that's where we went wrong.
Suddenly, whatever linguistic switch that operates these things is back on, though. She shouts for whoever takes her fancy when she wants to change positions or get dropped toys.
She shouts a lot, actually, just happy babbling. The best one is the long held note she does when you push her pram over cobbles. She clearly enjoys the way the bouncing makes her voice shake. Gothenburg has some pretty rough streets. They're the ones that make her sound like a yodelling competition.
As though to balance out the endless stream from the top, though, she got constipated yesterday.
F isn't a complainy baby. Pretty calm, generally, which means V and I aren't used to her having a day when she's all screams and miserable faces. Maybe it was a week of very hot sweaty weather, or maybe eating too many majs krokar, don't know. I do know she passed an interesting collection of pinecones and snail shells, perfectly sculpted out of poop.
No wonder she wanted to spend the entirely day lying stomach-down on mummy's legs, it looked exhausting. We went out and got a healthy supply of prunes and fresh fruit, including a punnet of raspberries. They're one of F's favourites, one of the first whole fruits she tried.
She can eat them all by herself now. You can recreate the spectacle of F eating a punnet of raspberries in your own home. Simply load handfuls of them into a shotgun and fire them at a chair from above. Once your house looks like the aftermath of a Guy Richie film, you have the general effect.
It worked, though, very smiley and active today. Also poopy, but in a good way.
Proto-talking, to be fair. Like 'Mama' does mean 'mummy', but also 'myam myam' (as in 'give me more food'), 'pick me up' and 'I'm awake, come get me.' 'Baba', which seems to denote me, also has multiple connotations. I don't think I get all of them yet. I'm also interchangable with mama, which for F's purposes is quite accurate.
It's funny, she actually first started saying 'mama' about three months ago. She said it over and over again for about two days, then totally lost interest in it and wouldn't repeat it at all, not for love nor money. We didn't actually offer her money, to be fair. Maybe that's where we went wrong.
Suddenly, whatever linguistic switch that operates these things is back on, though. She shouts for whoever takes her fancy when she wants to change positions or get dropped toys.
She shouts a lot, actually, just happy babbling. The best one is the long held note she does when you push her pram over cobbles. She clearly enjoys the way the bouncing makes her voice shake. Gothenburg has some pretty rough streets. They're the ones that make her sound like a yodelling competition.
As though to balance out the endless stream from the top, though, she got constipated yesterday.
F isn't a complainy baby. Pretty calm, generally, which means V and I aren't used to her having a day when she's all screams and miserable faces. Maybe it was a week of very hot sweaty weather, or maybe eating too many majs krokar, don't know. I do know she passed an interesting collection of pinecones and snail shells, perfectly sculpted out of poop.
No wonder she wanted to spend the entirely day lying stomach-down on mummy's legs, it looked exhausting. We went out and got a healthy supply of prunes and fresh fruit, including a punnet of raspberries. They're one of F's favourites, one of the first whole fruits she tried.
She can eat them all by herself now. You can recreate the spectacle of F eating a punnet of raspberries in your own home. Simply load handfuls of them into a shotgun and fire them at a chair from above. Once your house looks like the aftermath of a Guy Richie film, you have the general effect.
It worked, though, very smiley and active today. Also poopy, but in a good way.
Saturday, August 3, 2013
Friday 2nd
0700 - F and V are both up at the same time. V is getting ready for work and having breakfast. F is, well, basically the same, I suppose. While V eats, I feed F, then myself, and then play with F for a bit until she goes back to sleep.
0800 - V has left, F and I are sleeping. So flat out that when the digital TV installation people call, I don't notice, and wake up to their polite note on the doormat. It's pretty polite. I suspect their attempt to rouse me was pretty polite too, I don't usually sleep through doorbells, but you never know.
0900 - F has a second breakfast, banana flavour porridge with some mango and apple puree on top. She liberally applies this to her face and hands, accounting for her excellent complexion.
1000 - As I sit and look for acting jobs on the internet, I'm struck by the aroma of feces that seem heavy in the air. Looking round, I can see F in her stroller with a nice sticky tail of poop extruding itself down her right leg. Amazingly, it avoids the stroller, floor and toys altogether, instead accumulating nicely all over the inside of her clean clothes. And then, shortly afterwards, Daddy.
1100 - More sleep for F, some writing for me.
1200 - Out and about, picking up groceries from Willys (a Tesco analogue), a package for V and an iced coffee from Espresso House (a Starbucks analogue) for me. After all, this is my second official day as a lattepappa, staying at home while my wife works. I got off to a bad start, I didn't have any coffee at all yesterday.
1300 - Lunch, which is chicken with rice and vegetables today. We've run out of fruit puree, I didn't think to pick any up from Willys, and F is extremely vocal about her displeasure. Instead, we make do with vanilj krokar. These are basically vanilla-flavour wotsits (and just as awful as that sounds), but F loves them.
1400 - F is napping solidly, after a rousing few hands of Sweep the Smurfs. I need to invent some kind of self-redeploying smurf escalator (a smurfscalator?), otherwise I'm solely responsible for maintaining a constant supply of pixies to the bookshelf. It's like working in a tiny blue bowling alley before the automation of pinsetters.
1500 - I'm practising an unaccompanied song for an audition next week. F helps by accompanying me, first on the piano, then by singing, and then by mashing the wordsheet into the piano keys. This helps because I can't rely on the words any more, I have to learn them.
1600 - We go out for a walk to the botanical gardens. It's a very hot, sticky summer day here. August is called Rotten Month in Sweden, because all your food goes off twice as fast in the cloying summer weather. F cools off by splashing around in the fountains, where she's extra interested in the other naked toddlers doing the same thing.
1700 - Still out walking, wandering through Haga and looking at the outside of a flat we're interested in. F is more interested in the teddy bear blowing bubbles outside a toyshop. I explain to her that we can't add that as a requirement to our flat-hunting, but she doesn't seem convinced.
1800 - We all sit together in a little cafe that's on one of the bridges over the canal. V and I have a cool beer and some chilli nuts. This enrages F, who can't see why we get exciting fizzy drinks and crunchy things where she gets nothing. And I've left the thermos of water for making velling (her evening milky drink) at home, so we have to make do with more krokar.
1900 - F goes to bed and falls very totally asleep. V and I sit up on our computers, searching for flats or reading about advanced philosophy.
Okay, not really. V goes to bed around ten, I sit up playing computer games until late (0100), because it's Friday and I let myself do that on Fridays. Sorry. Maybe I'm a terrible parent.
But would a terrible parent buy their daughter this?
0800 - V has left, F and I are sleeping. So flat out that when the digital TV installation people call, I don't notice, and wake up to their polite note on the doormat. It's pretty polite. I suspect their attempt to rouse me was pretty polite too, I don't usually sleep through doorbells, but you never know.
0900 - F has a second breakfast, banana flavour porridge with some mango and apple puree on top. She liberally applies this to her face and hands, accounting for her excellent complexion.
1000 - As I sit and look for acting jobs on the internet, I'm struck by the aroma of feces that seem heavy in the air. Looking round, I can see F in her stroller with a nice sticky tail of poop extruding itself down her right leg. Amazingly, it avoids the stroller, floor and toys altogether, instead accumulating nicely all over the inside of her clean clothes. And then, shortly afterwards, Daddy.
1100 - More sleep for F, some writing for me.
1200 - Out and about, picking up groceries from Willys (a Tesco analogue), a package for V and an iced coffee from Espresso House (a Starbucks analogue) for me. After all, this is my second official day as a lattepappa, staying at home while my wife works. I got off to a bad start, I didn't have any coffee at all yesterday.
1300 - Lunch, which is chicken with rice and vegetables today. We've run out of fruit puree, I didn't think to pick any up from Willys, and F is extremely vocal about her displeasure. Instead, we make do with vanilj krokar. These are basically vanilla-flavour wotsits (and just as awful as that sounds), but F loves them.
1400 - F is napping solidly, after a rousing few hands of Sweep the Smurfs. I need to invent some kind of self-redeploying smurf escalator (a smurfscalator?), otherwise I'm solely responsible for maintaining a constant supply of pixies to the bookshelf. It's like working in a tiny blue bowling alley before the automation of pinsetters.
1500 - I'm practising an unaccompanied song for an audition next week. F helps by accompanying me, first on the piano, then by singing, and then by mashing the wordsheet into the piano keys. This helps because I can't rely on the words any more, I have to learn them.
1600 - We go out for a walk to the botanical gardens. It's a very hot, sticky summer day here. August is called Rotten Month in Sweden, because all your food goes off twice as fast in the cloying summer weather. F cools off by splashing around in the fountains, where she's extra interested in the other naked toddlers doing the same thing.
1700 - Still out walking, wandering through Haga and looking at the outside of a flat we're interested in. F is more interested in the teddy bear blowing bubbles outside a toyshop. I explain to her that we can't add that as a requirement to our flat-hunting, but she doesn't seem convinced.
1800 - We all sit together in a little cafe that's on one of the bridges over the canal. V and I have a cool beer and some chilli nuts. This enrages F, who can't see why we get exciting fizzy drinks and crunchy things where she gets nothing. And I've left the thermos of water for making velling (her evening milky drink) at home, so we have to make do with more krokar.
1900 - F goes to bed and falls very totally asleep. V and I sit up on our computers, searching for flats or reading about advanced philosophy.
Okay, not really. V goes to bed around ten, I sit up playing computer games until late (0100), because it's Friday and I let myself do that on Fridays. Sorry. Maybe I'm a terrible parent.
But would a terrible parent buy their daughter this?
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| Baby V Cthulhu in Facial Feeding Frenzy Championship. Result - 1:0 |
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