American

You know that thing people always say if they haven’t seen your baby for a while? “Oh my god, he’s changed soooo much”?

And you think: “really? I hadn’t noticed.” Because you haven’t, because it’s tough trying to keep track of the continual, gradual changes occurring in your offspring. But then, because it’s been pointed out, you do notice, and you spend a little while thinking about how the baby used to be?

Last weekend I spent an evening with a person who I hadn’t seen in eight years. Eight years! That’s more than a quarter of my whole life. Ages. Too long, actually, because the person in question is a great person to spend time with. Interesting, intelligent and amusing. The downside is he lives in America, and I can’t just pop to Seattle to meet him for a pint and a chat.

*shakes fist at the Atlantic*

The one thing an eight year gap does do though is provide a good opportunity to look back over what’s happened during that time. Which, aided by a few alcoholic beverages, was exactly what me, him and a few other people I went to school with but no longer see much of did. Just like the parent who doesn’t see the changes in their child, the evening made me realise that I don’t do a great job of seeing and appreciating the scale of the changes in my own life.
When my friend was last in the UK he spent a few nights at my house. Except it wasn’t. I still lived at home. We spent evenings drinking (far too much, probably) with some mutual friends, including my wife. Only she wasn’t my wife. She wasn’t even officially my girlfriend. I probably complained to him about the job I was made redundant from over two years ago. This time I told him I don’t like the job I have now. I was still too busy acting like a child to give much thought to having one of my own, now I can barely remember what my life was like without Cam.

We talked about him, we talked about me, we talked about the other people at the table and we talked about the many people who couldn’t be there. We talked about what they were doing, where they lived, which of them had kids and how many. We reminisced about the last time he’d been with us, and we reminisced about reminiscing about the time before, a further eight years back.

He has swapped playing in bands, working as a chef and all night drinking for climbing mountains, teaching others to climb mountains and training to be a teacher for children with special needs. I have a wife and child.

No matter how much our lives might change over time, no matter that we might not always be paying a suitable amount of attention to what’s different, we stay the same person. Just like the baby who hasn’t been seen for a few weeks.
Someone even managed a bit of beer fuelled insight toward the end of the evening: “none of us have changed, really. We’ve just grown beards.”
It was great to see you Dan, I hope you’re right that it won’t be another eight years before we see you again.

Sensitive

If you have met me you will know that I’m not at all scary. I’m generally possessed of a fairly cheery disposition, I like a chat and a hug and a laugh. I dislike confrontation and being made to feel uncomfortable.

It takes a lot to make me genuinely angry, and when it does happen it is usually a fleeting moment of rage.

I’ve never been in a fight, which is perhaps fairly unusual for a man. I did, once, get sufficiently consumed by the red mist that my brain fired the following message to my left arm: “throw a punch at that guy”. That message was immediately followed by another: “oh fuckshitballs, what are you doing, no, abort! Abort!”

Momentum carried the punch into the cheek of the person who’d riled me, but without the force of anger behind it I suspect the recipient thought I had intended to give them a gentle caress, not a knockout blow.

Actually, I know he didn’t, because he spent the next ten minutes taking the piss out of me for having such a feeble punch. The fourteen year old me happily accepted that he was right.

To adopt a cliché, I’m definitely a lover not a fighter.

Recent events are making me think Cam has managed to inherit my sensitivity and general wussiness.

Cam has a friend (well, Mrs L and I have some friends, and they happen to have a baby). She is about six weeks younger than Cam. She is a fair bit smaller than Cam. She is a mild mannered and contented baby.

Every time Cam spends any time with her, he cries.

Proper crying too, not just a bit of gentle whimpering. Full on, bottom lip curled out, streams of tears, bawling.

Why?

Because she shouts at him.

When this little girl gets excited she shouts. To the adult observer, it is cute. It’s a small explosion of noise which she seems unable to suppress. A verbal expression of joy which bursts from her mouth without much warning. It’s actually really lovely.

But Cam doesn’t like it.

Which, considering he’s off to nursery in three weeks time, is giving us a bit of cause for concern. What if our beautiful baby boy isn’t cut out for the dog eat dog world of Happy Hours Nursery? Will I be coming home from work to collect a tiny human exhausted and dehydrated from ten hours of uncontrollable sobbing?

Or, perhaps, like a stint in the army, nursery will be like baby boot camp for the little mite? He’ll go in a meek, easily upset cuddlebug and come out a finely tuned killing machine little bit less tearful.

Either way, we’ll soon find out, because there’s no alternative available to us at the moment. I just hope the other babies at nursery are nice and quiet………

Novelty

New babies are great.  Everyone loves them.  They melt the hearts of even the stoniest of unfeeling bastards with the simple grasp of a finger, or moment of eye contact. 

Instinct innit.  Doesn’t matter who you are; you’ve had it hard coded into you to care about a new baby.  It’s all small and soft.  It exudes potential and promise (and poo).  It is wholly vulnerable; it NEEDS you to love and protect it.

This is why, when we are blessed with that greatest of gifts, everyone wants to come and see it.  Wants to be a part of the miracle of life, the excitement of by-proxy parenthood.  I get that.  I’ve been the guy spending a bit too much time in the house of the new parent because I’m busy cooing (sorry @chloehyde81 & @jameshyde80).

Me and Mrs L did a pretty good job of locking down our home to visitors.  We’ve seen our closest family, some of our good friends, but we have also turned people away.  The measly two weeks of paternity leave I am granted was used as it should be, as family time.  I didn’t even have to deflect any of the Unwanted Attention I was expecting (although, there’s still time for that)

We’ve had the help and support from professionals, we’ve had the help, support and food from family.  We have done well. 

We are drip feeding the arrival of our baby to the world. 

Subconsciously, I wonder, are we restricting the supply in order to bolster the demand?

The above mentioned Twitter people said something as they left our house last weekend, something which made me realise how glad I am to know them and count them as friends:

“If there’s anything you need, get in touch, even if it’s in a few weeks.  Because it’s once everyone stops wanting to help you that you’ll really need it.”

It wasn’t something I’d thought about.  But I think it’s true.  There will be people who always want to know about the Creature and what’s going on in his (and our) lives: our respective parents, the three sets of aunts and uncles who we are close to and speak to regularly, some of our friends.  

There are far more people whose interest in him stops once the next newborn comes along, people to whom our greatest achievement is just another baby, a fleeting novelty who they’re only interested in cooing over in the knowledge that he can be handed back at the merest hint of a cry. 

Which is fine, of course.  I don’t for a moment expect the rest of the world to revolve around MY child.  I’m in no way complaining about this.  I wouldn’t want him to be the centre of anyone’s attention for any length of time, anyone but ours. 

It is a relief though, to know there’s support there in the long term, once the novelty has worn off.  Because it’s not always going to be easy.

Now, who’s going to volunteer to be on my “list of people I can phone at 4am when he’s been crying for hours and just emptied his bowels on my last clean pair of jeans”?  *anticipates queue*

When worlds collide

Evening.  I've just about reached the point of feeling human after a rather jolly night out last night.  Part one was a meeting of bloggytweety people in Brizzle for @MammasaurusBlog's twenty-first birthday.  A finer bunch of people I could not have hoped to meet.  I'll be honest, I'd been worrying about it a bit.  I'm not generally too good with meeting new people.  I needn't have worried, I got a warm welcome from @SAHDandproud, @jbmumofone and @motherventing who were there when I arrived, and everyone else turned up once I'd had a couple of beers and was feeling more comfortable.

There was plenty of chat.  Chat about blogs and blogging, about Twitter, about everyone's kids, about lots of other stuff that was nothing to do with the internet or parenting.  It was just a night out, like any other, with some really lovely people.  I also got to try cauliflower puree (which, for the record, tastes like thickened air).

Mammasaurus' Cupcakes

I've only been blogging for just over a month, so it was fantastic to meet some more established bloggers this early on.

Part two was a house warming party about a mile away, with people I've known for years.  Because I arrived late I was asked where I'd been.  Because I was a bit drunk I let people know I'd been meeting up with some people I'd met online.  Probably because they were drunk they found this hilarious.  Thankfully, after a bit of piss taking we moved on to other topics.  It got me thinking though; clearly it's not yet accepted as the norm to mix and match the online world and the offline one.

I hadn't told many people I know in the "real world" that I'd started a blog until last night.  My wife knew (hello!) and that was about it.  I'd told a few I was writing it, but not where to find it, and everyone else had no idea.

I like my little corner of the internet, and I like being able to write what I want here.  It pissed me off when people I like couldn't see that meeting up with people from the internet is NOT weird in the slightest.  So I've decided, I won't be telling my "real world" friends where to find my blog, in case they annoy me enough to want to say something about them.  There's an exception to that of course, because I'd like to think I can now count the strangers I met last night to celebrate a birthday as real world friends as well as online ones, which has to be the best of both worlds.

Huge thanks to everyone who was out last night, it was a true pleasure to meet you all, hope to do it again soon!