Babies

Recently we have been looking at/playing with a lot of babies. Or more accurately two different babies, which is still a big uplift on our daily average. Baby number one is my heathen child, which is the equivalent of a Godchild for those of us who are godless heathens, but unfortunately makes him sound like he was born at some kind of pagan ceremony which is pretty far from the truth. He is the son of my oldest friend who looked so much like his father when he was first born that I found it quite peculiar to hold him. Fortunately, in the last 6 months since we saw him he has grown up a little bit and although he still bears a staggering resemblance to his Dad, he is now much less freakishly identical now making all interaction with him less peculiar. Our first encounter was when he was six weeks old and absolutely chock full of colic, so he was inconsolable for most of the visit albeit still very sweet. Now he is a massive beaming ray of delight, smiling his way through the rigours of daily life, enjoying having the chubbiest thighs in the world and generally being a little blond haired angel. He is the first child for whom I have bought tiny baby clothes because they were cute and I had an excuse to, so is probably going to be responsible for some rash spending over the course of his life as well. Baby number two is the daughter of some of our tiniest friends and is minuscule, much tinier than the Heathen son who is five months younger. She is clearly already of the opinion that tininess should not interfere with her ability to control the world around her, and has perfected an array of growls and threatening behaviour designed to bend her parents, their friends and possibly anyone else around her to her will. It is surprisingly effective, and she is surprisingly cute, which makes her potentially tiny tearaway behaviour endearingly impish. She has massive eyes which, when turned on the Boy Wonder in particular, reduce him to a state of obsequiousness in his desire to make her smile (and me too if I'm honest, but she seems much more taken with the clown-like silhouette of the Boy Wonder). I also had a moment of revelation at my sister-in-law's wedding recently - there was a small child there who must have been around 4 or 5 and was entertainingly well behaved. At some point I found her gleefully making jewellery out of glow sticks and eating sweets. She asked if there were any pink sweets, and I found her a flying saucer which she said she had never tried. One bite later and it was clear she wasn't a convert, so I offered her my hand to spit the partially chewed piece of rice paper into. Admittedly I was slightly drunk, but once I had accepted I was going to eat the untouched part of the flying saucer, it was after only a short period a sticky handed unwillingness to move that I thought 'Oh well, I might as well eat the piece she spat out as well - what else am I going to do with it?' and in it went! I suppose this is the kind of thing that parents give no thought to, but having considered myself quite un child-friendly in many respects, my recent willingness to hold, feed and generally 'sort out' children has revealed hidden depths of either maternal, or at least pseudo maternal instincts which I suppose were bound to kick in eventually. If only the Boy Wonder had a smaller head and a lesser desire to force any offspring we might bear into playing the Hammond Organ it might all seem less terrifying...