Good Afternoon Negative Soundbyters! It’s a balmy 23 degrees outside; there’s a bit of Country playing on the radio and Rafe is lying on his changing mat in our extension having a kick about - nappy off. Mrs H says just she likes to give him a bit of freedom from the confines of his nappy, which I’m totally cool with but I have kept a close eye on the one-eyed snake. Two salvos later and I have come away relatively unscathed - a few hits to the track pants but otherwise ok. It’s no. 2 I am more wary of; that’s a different clean-up operation entirely! He had a great time staring out through the French doors; no idea what he was looking at but judging by the smiles and gurgles it must have been stimulating his ever-developing grey matter. The creative in me likes to think he sees fairies and little elves dancing and playing in the trees…
Talking of smiles I think I received my first one the other day. I don’t think he had successfully passed a movement (which is always the precursor to a beaming baba) because his eyes didn’t screw up and his face turn a beetroot colour and Mrs H wasn’t in the immediate vicinity so I can now lay claim to my “first smile” as a New Dad, based just on, well…being me! Huzzaaah as my Mom says. Mrs H has been clocking up smiles like they are going out of fashion and I was like “Jeez dude you need to throw me a bone here…I am beginning to get a serious complex” and then out of the blue, he looked at me square in the eye and suddenly his lips morphed into this “ear-to-ear” smile – gums-and-all! “Don’t worry New Dad, I’ve got you” and then as quickly as it appeared, it vanished almost as if to say “Don’t get ahead of yourself New Dad. You don’t have a boob so you are going to have to work even harder!” I basked in the glory of my first smile for but a minute before I heard the rumblings of a no. 2 and back into the trenches I went…!
And what of events of geopolitical nature…
The Big Blonde Gerbil and Kim Jong Ling Pung Kung (or Little Rocket Man as The Donald calls him now) continue to trade insults. North Korea has labelled The Donald a “mentally deranged megalomaniac”; I don’t often agree with what comes out of that propaganda machine but that seems like a bang on description to me. BBG responded on Twitter with “Just heard Foreign Minister of North Korea speak at UN. If echoes thoughts of Little Rocket Man, they won’t be around much longer.” It feels like BBG is threatening LRM with nuclear war on social media; if you wanted to report this to Twitter, the option “I don’t like this Tweet” doesn’t quite do justice to the gravity of this situation. Twitter needs a “Threatened world annihilation” category. Ouch.
Moving on – with a bang – to this week’s anecdote!
Big Love
Hoddy X
Sleep.
A word that Rafe is still coming to terms with – as are his newbie parents!
He prefers to sleep on his terms and at just 7 ½ weeks that’s pretty much over his dead body. He just isn’t that into it and likes to be up with the adults participating. I think he suffers from serious FOMO.
Take last night for instance….
We had my uncle and his wife to stay on Saturday night which included dinner for four – note that I didn’t say five. The fifth person was supposed to be bathed, fed and quietly tuning out to Euan the Sheep by the time we sat down for dinner. Um, that is a Negative Jim.
Rafe told the most abused sheep in south west London to get lost and promptly summoned Mrs H with the air raid siren. We thought that maybe he was just testing us and when one of us didn’t appear immediately he might give up and bring Euan back into the fold. Again. No. He just ratcheted up the siren to the next level.
So I was left to man the fort, which promptly resulted in me burning the steaks that I had been tending to on the braai, while Mrs H sprinted upstairs to pacify Rafe. She hauled out the next weapon in her arsenal – the hair dryer soundtrack on Youtube that plays – yes you guessed it, a hairdryer. This seemed to do the trick and the nursery fell silent….um…ja…whatever….
No sooner had Mrs H sat down than a very loud “eeeeehhhhhhhhh” echoed throughout the house and before we knew it the air raid siren was at full blast. Rafe was having none of our pacification measures. Resigned to her fate, Mrs H disappeared upstairs. I started chopping up her steak into bite sized chunks because I knew what was coming…all 7 ½ weeks of him!
We didn’t quite make up a setting for him, but he sat on Mrs H’s knee and disappeared under her top every-now-and-then for a quick snack while Mrs H valiantly tackled her meal with just her fork. Rafe was loving it; he was back with the adults and dessert was but a nipple away!
Some people might take a different view of breast-feeding at the dinner table; I take the view that they can kiss my hoop (or nipple if you prefer – eh?). As newbie parents this is about survival. You do whatever it takes. There is plenty of time for Rafe to learn table manners; at this stage if he wants dessert after having been put to bed, go right ahead my son – drink until your heart’s content.
Eventually he did go to bed – just! But he made up for it by blowing raspberries, as Mrs H describes it, at 5:30 the next morning. I thought that if I pretended to be asleep, Mrs H would take pity on me. Um. No. Not a chance. My turn.
Thankfully it was a crisp, clear morning so I popped him in the Baby Bjorn and off we went for a little tour of Streatham Common. Magic Father-Son time. Every cloud has a silver lining.
OUT!
Pic of the Week
Early morning sun on our travels this morning...
