Give her a big hand, ladies and gentlemen.

Araminter has hands.  I know, it’s not a startling revelation, unless you thought she had been born without arms and I had just not bother to mention it in the hope no one would notice.  The reason I point it out now, is that last week she kind of didn’t have.  You see at some point babies learn that the flappy things in their peripheral vision are actually part of them, and they can control them, and use them.

Last week we were in a department store, which of course had a childrens’ section, and Araminter had a few bits and pieces pushed in front of her to elicit the impression of an opinion.  Apart from learning that she only likes things made by Silver Cross (she already has taste, expensive taste) she also liked Miffy.  So a very lightweight, very soft rattle, with the disembodied head of a leporid, was added to her already extensive portfolio of infant objet d’art.

The only slight problem being that she couldn’t actually play with the rattle, we had to rattle it for her, and while having someone else do even the most menial tasks for you sounds like the ideal of luxury to us adults, it was clearly frustrating to her.

On Friday if the rattle was pushed in to her hand, she would grip it for an instant then it would slip and drop beside her.  We did a lot of this all evening; grip, drop, grip, drop.  Sometimes she laughed, or smiled and made her happy noise, sometimes she frowned.  The very next morning while we lounged in bed with her between us, the rattle was again passed to her, and she gripped it and held it, and didn’t drop it for over a minute.  Incredibly she appeared to have learnt that literally overnight.  Now before I get all carried away with whether she should become and astronaut or a Nobel laureate, it’s probable she was tired the night before, and not tired an hour after a full nights sleep.

By Sunday she was in her element, gripping things, pushing them in her mouth and although not picking anything up, she was hitting them, in an attempt to obtain them.

Of course this new found skill will bring problems, as well as benefits.  Things being pushed in to her mouth when they really shouldn’t be, a vice like grip on clothes when we’re trying to put her down and hair pulling when she’s having a cuddle.  Still, minor inconveniences; I’m sure when she crashes my car it’ll be much more inconvenient.

My little girl is growing, and starting to interact with the world, to understand that there is a universe out there and she can be part of it and shape it and make it do what she wants’ it to do.  How long do I have to wait until I can explain how the second law of thermodynamics creates time itself?

The Goose that laid the Golden Sleep

Why do they call it golden sleep; on that stupid nappy advert?  It already has a perfectly good name, REM sleep.  It has a well established definition and purpose.  Why invent a new word for it just because you work in marketing and you assume most of your customers are dumb enough to think REM is a band?  Rapid Eye Movement; it’s the outward sign that your brain is making sense of the universe according to itself.

Or maybe it’s not about that at all?  Maybe the ‘golden’ is meant to apply not to the child, but to the parent?  A child that sleeps for hour after hour is worth its weight in gold.

Once upon a time Araminter would sleep, for ten minutes, then feed, for ten minutes, then sleep again, all night.  After only a single night of this, it was clearly unacceptable.  Death, despair, and destitution beckoned.  The next night rocking and singing was introduced.  That’s rocking as a verb, to rock her back and forth, as opposed to rocking out, which, er, I guess is also a verb; never mind.  The signing wasn’t rocking; just gentle melodies.  That sort of worked, for the others in the house anyway.  Lottie would sleep between feeds, and Araminter would sleep in my arms while I swayed gently back and forth, as she would wake the microsecond her back touched a mattress.  Did you know your central heating actually does something?  A modern house with double glazing and draft excluders and such is noticeably not warm at three in the morning.  Daddycool became Daddycold.

Now our lives have been transformed.  I’m not tired.  She is six weeks old, I’ve been back at work for three weeks, and I’m not tired.  I go to bed and get up at roughly the same time I used to, and I’m not tired.  Araminter has started sleeping through the night, or at least most of the way through so that a good few hours can be gained before a feed.

How on earth has this been achieved you ask?  Have we picked up a Holy Grail while we were in Waitrose, or are we just dosing her up on Ketamine?  Tempting, but no; we dose her up on milk.  As the evening progresses her feeds become closer together until she’s bursting with milk.  It’s a simple idea; we noticed that if she has a good feed then she will always have a nap.  Like all of us really; give us a good meal and wrap us up all snug and warm and we’ll all drop off.  Ever tried staying awake through the grand prix after too much roast?  I don’t think I’ve ever managed it.

From about eight o clock onwards Araminter is presented with an endless succession of breasts and is not allowed to get really hungry between feeds, she just gets topped up.  Then the last feed of the day, between ten and eleven is the full super-size me.  She always falls asleep after a while, so we pick her up and play with her or change her, whatever to wake her up, and then more milk.  Finally when Lottie is empty, or Araminter just won’t wake up anymore we put her to bed.

For all those who already have kids, a bit of boasting.  Araminter has managed eight uninterrupted hours for six of the last eight nights.  How cool is Daddycool now?

That's what she said.

Araminter is rather vocal; she likes to make little noises and jazz hands, she’s very good at jazz hands and urban style gangster hand gestures.  Oh god, how old does that make me sound?  I’m a teenage tearaway I promise; I got my girlfriend pregnant at fifteen, honest, well give or take twenty years.  She also like sounds, especially music.  I sing to her when trying to calm her down.  She likes Daisy, Daisy; Row, Row, Row Your Boat; and Sympathy for the Devil.  I’m hoping I can educate her properly about music, and keep her away from manufactured rubbish for as long as possible, but I know full well that at some point in the next sixteen years she’ll put the iPod (or 2020 equivalent) on in my car and play me some ghastly pop poo.

Mind, it’ll be a nice change from actual poo.  So far in my journey through fatherhood I have found I’m rather good at the whole interacting with Araminter and getting her to do what I need, bit.  Time for a few actual tips:  Lottie likes to have a go at winding her, and to be fair she usually manages fine, but I invariable get her passed to me if nothing happens after a couple of minutes as I can get a burp in no time where upon she sounds like Jim Royle.  The secret; men have larger hands so can pat a larger area, and I’m just prepared to use more force than mum.  When she won’t sleep and just keeps crying it is I who steps in to calm her down while Lottie can get some sleep.  The secret, when she won’t stop crying, is to distract her.  She stops crying to pay attention to what ever it is I’m doing instead.  Then she stops and thinks, what was I doing, oh yes I was crying.  As long as she doesn’t get the chance to build up momentum then it doesn’t become one of those, full volume, crying simply because she’s crying.

She also likes Top Gear on Dave.  She rolls over to watch it and even though her visual cortex is still forming and she can’t even see in colour yet, let alone tell the difference between the diesel and petrol versions of the X5, she enjoys the movement and rapid changes in contrast.  Personally I am a bit worried that she thinks Jeremy Clarkson is her dad.

What I’m really doing is avoiding the real issue.  It’s important to listen to your baby, important that I understand and learn about Araminters little noises.  Only then can I have any protection from the SuperSoaker filled with poo that is somehow contained within her tiny frame.  She has this amazing skill, the ability to project a stream of whole grain mustard a distance equal to her own body length; no really, it looks just like it.  Take her nappy off, clean her up, get the barrier cream ready, the little white blob on my finger approaching that cliché soft object, and then I realise, something’s different; time slows, the mood changes, somewhere a dog barks, a look in her eye, that slight sound; you got to be fast.  Duck and cover.  Dodge and roll.  Sand bags would be good.  It’s incredible how something so small and vulnerable is capable of such pressurisation!  We keep a pile of ten small towels next to the changing mat (ASDA, pound a pack), and on one infamous occasion seven of them were on the dryer at the same time.

Still I can’t complain too much, not now that I’ve cracked getting her to sleep through the night.  That’s right everyone, then next instalment is the mother lode.

Masterchef, here I come!

As I browse the shelves of our newly expanded Tesco I wonder if I should try ASDA; they’re a bit cheaper, so they keep saying, and of course there is the build your own pizza counter.  But I can do better than that as I engage more with my new roll of head chef.  Once I would have retreated to the easy option of a meat pizza with extra meat, instead I set off deeper in to Tesco, to the less visited sections.

A month at home has taught me two very important things.  The first is that two and half is the most times you can watch the same episode of Top Gear on Dave, and the second is that food is the one thing we can both look forward to.

The days with a very small baby are very disjointed.  Sometimes she sleeps at night, sometimes the early hours of the morning.  Our day may begin at nine in the morning, or eleven.  The nursery laundry and nappy bins might be filled in a single day or three days.  Each day is different with only small, fleeting moments of continuity.

Food provides an island of stability where we can seek sanctuary.  Somewhere that is dependable and reliable and predictable.  To make sure of this it has to be varied.  No matter how favourite your favourite food, it will be distasteful, boring and hated after days and days of the same thing.

So sandwiches get toasted, fish and salad gets included, stilton goes on burgers and almost anything goes with pasta.  My trip round Tesco turns in to a trip round the world; Mexican, Thai, Chinese, American, German, well maybe not.  I’ve enjoyed it rediscovering cooking that I’ve not tried for years.

Breast feeding gives Lottie a blessed relief from the perennial problem of woman everywhere; it requires five hundred, to a thousand extra calories a day to produce her milk and keep Araminter healthy.  In effect she has to eat two large meals a day so can abandon a life time of being careful about what she eats, combined with the release from the food sanctions brought on by pregnancy.  Now she can eat all those forbidden foods; she has just discovered grilled Halloumi which I have being waiting months to introduce her to.

A lot of mothers become iron deficient during pregnancy as they make an extra four pints of blood and now is an excellent time to recover from that as steak is back on the menu.  Lottie, like all sensible people, can’t see the point in eating steak if it has to be well done, but for some obscure reason pregnant ladies have to have it that way, so it was gone for her for nine months.  But not anymore; steak, broccoli, and a big glass of orange juice should get some ferrite in her!

One word of warning before you get all Jamie on this.  What ever you make has to be the sort of thing you can just leave in a warm oven once it’s ready.  If Lottie’s feeding time and Araminters overlap then Araminter wins every time.  The noise if you try doing it the other way round ruins the very pleasure the meal was supposed to produce.  If it can sit on the hob with a lid on it for twenty minutes then every one will have a much nicer time.  That wonderful full feeling after a really tasty lunch or dinner is just what we need to give us a lift, cheer us up and generally make us feel that being a parent isn’t so bad.

So what shall I do next?  Mushroom risotto, or tuna steak with sweet potato wedges and rocket salad?  I pause to look at the joints on the meat isle.  A roast; perfect for the mealtime which is a moving target.

War, like laundry, is hell

What I can’t understand about the Japanese is their need to kill themselves when they suffer a military defeat.  As General Kuribashi said, how can I plan a strategy like this?  He had a point, there was no possibility of defeating, or even really delaying the American capture of Iwo Jima; he was out numbered, out gunned, and had neither ships nor planes, but every time an area was over run and he tried to pull his troops back to reinforce the remaining positions under his control, a wave of suicides would break out, driven mainly by the office classes, which would mean the near total loss of all the troops in the over run area.  This is what I learnt whilst doing the ironing.  Combining ironing and war films while Lottie and Araminter sleep is an activity I have added to my repertoire lately.  So far I’ve covered Clint Eastwood’s Iwo Jima epics, revisited The Hurt Locker and think either Blackhawk Down or Where Eagles Dare next.

Now that I have a baby, and if you’re a new father reading this, now you have a one too, laundry is a big part of life.  We have two laundry baskets, one in our room, one in Araminters.  Hers fills up really quick, as first it’s much smaller, and second it has to deal with routine and emergency changes of clothes, towel and blankets.  I have put at least one load of washing on each day since she came home, some times I manage three in a day, but only if I get the clothes drier totally optimised.

You see, the main roll of the man in a new family is logistics.  If it’s empty we fill it, if it’s finished we throw it, if it’s on the floor we pick it up, and if it’s dirty we wash it.  I happen to think that is probably the ideal task for most men.  We like to think we’re good at logistics; it requires planning and forethought.  We’re like a great general, balancing and weighing many competing demands, seeking the ideal compromise between operations of varying priorities; it’s an intellectual task and is certainly not house work.

My drive to keep up with the laundry was so effective that I decided to overtake and stay ahead of it.  I would empty both of the baskets and keep up them almost empty, indefinitely!  This plan was simple; I would create multiple pre-sorted piles of clothes.  One would always be in the washing machine, one next to it to go in and a third ready to be mined as soon as the change over in the kitchen had occurred.  The frame for drying the clothes on would have to be run with ruthless efficiency; there could be no room for mercy or favouritism.  Wet clothes would be hung at the top, well spaced for quick drying, then moved down in to denser configurations as they dried, before being pushed to the airing cupboard as soon as they were ready.  Unfortunately I had over looked the one weak spot.  After three days the airing cupboard had became an explosion risk, so packed was its interior.

The ironing, I had totally over looked the ironing, and since Lottie had always done it before and I was a novice I would have to tackle this self made mountain slowly, and alone.  Like Operation Market Garden, my plan lay in ruins.  I had totally over looked the Panzer Division parked just down the road (I think Bridge to Far has to go on the viewing list now).  I had became bogged down and thoughts of one great push to victory became ever more distant.

My parents had offered a tumble drier for Christmas.  We’ve never had one I said, and where would we put it?  We just air dry things, I added.

I should have held out for the tumble drier.

Sleep deprivation makes you feel decisive

‘Dear Novice Dad’, people say to me, ‘You’ve learnt so much already, can you help me?’  Well actually no one says that, but it’s true; I’ve learnt loads and releasing that millions, or maybe hundreds, of other men are bound to be in a similar situation I have finally decided to start my blog.  I’ve being thinking of blogging for years, but never had anything sensible, or interesting, or possibly even intelligible to say, so it kinda never happened.  A bit like starting a family, something Lottie and I have come to later than many of our friends.  Well on the 28th of December, our darling Araminta arrived and finally I have something I can talk about whilst simultaneously being able to justify or perhaps emphasise my total lack of experience and knowledge on the subject matter.

Having announced my courageous decision to pass on so called wisdom, I wish to start by saying sleep deprivation makes you feel decisive, but doesn’t actually aid good decision making.  Perhaps this blog will turn out to be a further example of that. 

Lottie and I have just returned from our first walk out with the pram.  It was great to finally get all three of us out of the house at the same time.  Araminta didn’t arrive all that smoothly, so Lottie is recovering with stitches.  These don’t encourage the long walks we used to enjoy, or running up stairs, sitting in cars, sitting generally, or moving quickly.  Frankly they’re a pain in the arse, pun intended.  Still, it was nice just to be in the fresh air, Araminta opening one eye briefly to give the sky a suspicious stare, the familiar streets giving a much absence sense of normality to our day as we walked to the post box.  Once there I posted the hand make thank you cards Lottie had crafted for those kind enough to send Araminta some thoughtful late Christmas presents into the box, with no addresses on the envelopes.  Lottie looked at me; I looked at the pen she was holding, which she had just fished from her handbag.  She had passed me the cards, I posted them; it seemed the right thing to do.  I had basically taken these hand made treasures (she’s bloody good at card making) and thrown them away, with a stamp on; I had paid to throw them away.

Sleep deprivation makes you feel decisive.

I have to go make the dinner now, something that will be covered in future posts, along with; maintaining a routine, seeing friends, sharing the workload equitably, how to make housework simple, and babies are great fun all the time.