I put all three of my lovely apple tree’s in this morning. As you can see from the picture below the garden is now complete and does not need a single other thing doing to it.
Sometimes I look out of the window and am full of dread and pessimism about the garden, feeling that I’ll never get it into any kind of usable state. Other days I can look out and think “ah, there’s not that much to do! I’ll just bang a few plants in and it’ll be fineâ€. The truth is somewhere in between the two I suspect. It does look a lot better than it did when we first moved in though.
I’ve a horrible feeling that the apple trees are destined to die, despite me following Mr Flowerdew’s instructions to the best of my abilities. The soil here is far from wonderful, as are my gardening skills. I’ll keep you posted on the tree’s wellbeing, but if you are the type of person who becomes emotional at the sight of a wilting bush then I advise you to continue to read my blog with caution.
I’m not usually a competitive man. This is probably due to the fact that I’m rubbish at most games and sports and so haven’t got a chance of winning anything anyway. To be competitive would only invite constant disappointment.
I was surprised therefore when I found myself comparing Amy to other children from the moment she was born. I have fairly little contact with other kids myself, but Kerry sees an array of different mums and their children. Each time she returns from one of these visits I subtlety enquire, “So, how’s ____ doing?†The precise nature of my enquiries has changed as Amy has got older. Initially I was focused on weight, then smiling, then sitting up, then crawling, and so on. Currently I’m in a transition period between focusing on vocabulary and social skills. Every time I get a report in Amy’s favour a maniacal grin crosses my face, I arch my fingers, and mumble a sinister “Excellentâ€. It’s not that I want any of these other kids to be failures, far from it, I just like having my convictions about Amy’s genius confirmed.
Kerry is no doubt aware of my foible, and does a good job of tolerating it without colluding with me. At my core I do realise that Amy’s just a normal, happy kid, and that’s certainly more than enough to fulfil my ambitions for her – just happy would have done. I’m not going to become one of those parents who push their own ambitions on their children. I’ll not ask her to for anything that she doesn’t want for herself. I think I’m always going to be finding reasons to be proud of her though, I think that’s just what dads do.
Amy and I were coming out of nursery on Friday when she stopped dead in her tracks. “Listen Daddy!” she said “Beautiful bird singing”. We spent the next five minutes listening to a blackbird sitting on a lamppost bringing the day to an end. Once she’d heard enough she turned to me and said, “We go now yes? And go get a lollypop yes?”. “Yes ok” I said. How could I refuse?
There is a laurel tree in our next-door neighbour Eric’s garden. Well technically about fifty percent of it is in his garden and the other half in ours. If our boundaries were strictly drawn it probably would all belong to us. This tree blocks out a lot of our light and we’ve recently taken to plotting in order to get it pruned. It would be a pretty major job as it’s in a tricky spot and would most likely need at least part of our road closing off to do it. Eric’s house still belongs to the Council* and so we were wondering if we could persuade them to cut it down for us. Kerry has also recently informed me that the leaves of the Laurel tree when crushed up make cyanide. The fact she knew this worried me slightly, especially as she’s been studying our insurance policy a lot recently. I think we might have to bump the removal of the Cyanide Tree a few places up our list of Things To Do.
Continuing the theme, I bought three apple trees online last night (at about 1:30am after driving back from Kerry’s parents and being too pepped up on Red Bull to sleep). I was full of good intentions this morning to start digging some holes in preparation for their arrival, but it’s chucking it down. Ah well, I’ll have to resign myself to laying around the house all day in my underwear. These days when my time off coincides with Amy’s days in Nursery are such a chore. I might dig my hole tomorrow when I’ve got Amy to help me, after all she’s handy to have around when it comes to DIY:
Amy did a poo today without straining. Now I know that seems a little uninspiring to most people, and understandably so. But to her parents who have spent the last week watching as she desperately tries to pass a solid mass the size of a kiwi fruit it was joyful news indeed. Yesterday she strained so hard she gave herself a nosebleed. She’s been prescribed some laxative and so I took an executive decision to double it. We were all set to make an appointment with the GPs but now we’ve seen a light at the end of the tunnel, so to speak, we’ll leave it and see how it goes.
I think I’ll refrain from trying to find a picture to illustrate this post, but for those who are interested I urge you to check out the Bristol Stool Chart. This masterpiece in graphic design kept me amused on many a long shift during my nurse training.
Mary Poppins Morning
A morning when a young child wakes so unreasonably early that her parents resort to getting her into bed with them and putting Mary Poppins on the DVD. Has the unfortunate side effect of causing the parents to have “It’s a jolly holiday with Mary” going round their head for the rest of the day.
A Mary Poppins morning is the direct opposite of a It’s 8 O’Clock and she’s still not up, do you think she’s ok? morning.
I try to take Amy swimming once every couple of weeks. We both tend to enjoy it and it’s no bad thing that she gets comfortable in the water. She’s pretty happy bobbing around, but whether you could define it as actually swimming is debatable. She relies completely on her armbands for buoyancy and hasn’t yet grasped the fact that she can use her arms for propulsion as well as her legs.
The thing that Amy enjoys most about swimming however is getting out and then back in again. If I let her she would spend hours clambering up and down the ladder into the pool. The main reason I don’t let her is not that she gets in the way of other swimmers using the ladder - I have enough pent up rage at length swimmers constant tutting as they have to swim round us to last me a lifetime (the timetable says public swim damnit - public includes 2 year olds and their overweight fathers). No, the reason I try and dissuade her is the fact that she’s fascinated by the water that runs off her when she gets out. So fascinated that she feels the need to squat down and observe it trickling off the bottom of her swim nappy. Now I know that it’s chlorinated water and not urine that’s poring off my daughters bottom, but I’m not convinced anyone else does. I leave in fear of the day that a shrill whistle from the lifeguard precedes our banning from Kirklees swimming pools for life.
We’ve had a pretty creative week. The pinnacle of which was the spectacular creation that is Amy’s Easter bonnet. Who would have thought that a trip to the Huddersfield indoor market would yield sufficient materials for what is sure to be the new craze to sweep the nation.
To be honest I’m looking forward to summer now. The range of indoor activities is starting wear thin and it’s becoming increasingly tempting to switch on Cbeebies when inspiration dries up. It’s a quirk, or even a fault, of mine that I feel the necessity to Do something on each of my days off. If I just kick around the house the time seems to go quicker somehow and I feel that I’ve wasted precious time. These days I’ve added the feeling of guilt that I’m not stimulating Amy too. The logical part of me realises that she finds pottering around the house seeing how much of the floor she can cover with toys just as much fun as driving half an hour or so in order to have an outing. That doesn’t stop me exclaiming, “lets go pot-holing!” as soon as I get my first twinge of boredom.
Hopefully the summer will open out a wealth of new possibilities - such as the park, picnics, and perhaps even trips to the beach.
EepyBird's sticky note experiment. Or, lets be honest, post-it note experiment. Trademark restrictions have no place on my blog. A fantastically creative video.
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