Published by Dan at September 29, 2006
in General.
Amy has developed a taste for the Beach Boys. I played her a greatest hits CD in the car the other day and since then it’s been a regular request. This has come like manna from heaven. I’d much rather listen to Brian Wilson’s expertly crafted harmonies than the Early Learning Centre’s session musicians plodding their way through She’ll be Coming Round the Mountain.
We’ve developed various actions for each song. I Get Around involves us spinning round until we’re on the verge of throwing up; and Surfing USA prompts us to mount our pretend surf boards and catch some waves on the living room floor (or the couch if Mummy’s not home).
Every time California Girls comes on she proudly tells me “This one is about me!†I’m not sure if she thinks she is a Hawaiian Island girl or a Midwest farmer’s daughter, but I’m not about to burst her bubble.
The only downside is that the better Beach Boys songs are quite complex, and can be quite difficult to sing along to. She’s has a try though, and once the impending baby gets a bit bigger perhaps we could form some sort of tribute band. I’m sure people would gladly pay good money to watch us pretend to surf on the living room carpet.
Published by Dan at September 28, 2006
in General.
“Daddy,†in an incredibly whiney voice “I want my dummyâ€.
“Ask nicely.â€
“Daddy,†in a sickly sweet voice “I want my dummy please.â€
“Ask hopping.â€
“Daddy,†holding onto the furniture and jumping up and down on one leg “I want my dummy please.â€
“Ask pretending to be a monkeyâ€
“I don’t want to play any more.â€
I have a late addition to my claims to fame list:
- Someone I used to work with is a close friend of John Hegley
Kerry and I went to see him at Leeds City Varieties this evening (John Hegley that is, not the person I used to work with - although actually he was there as well). For those of you who don’t know he’s a comedian/poet, and a damn fine one at that. I offer you a sample by way of illustration:
That’s entertainment
While I was gone away
down to the spray
of the ocean,
leg bent
the dog went
in my tent,
it was a small wet
and yet
it meant
more to me
than all the sea did.
We nearly didn’t go as we were running a bit late and I thought that we would end up arriving after the performance had actually started. I am very reluctant to walk into any comedy show after the comedian has come out onto the stage as I have a strong aversion for unwanted public attention and you are invariably seen as an easy target. Anyhow we weren’t late in the end, which was just as well as we had bought box seats which would have probably made us even more vulnerable.
We had a great time and, inspired by this evenings entertainment, I have now decided that the prize for the best claim to fame competition will be a book of John Hegley’s fabulous comedic poems. I am more than willing to mail it overseas, so all you Mongolians and Czechoslovakians are still in with a chance. However, I refuse to identify a winner if there are less than ten competitors. So even if you don’t want the book you should enter in order that others may benefit. Go on, you know you want to.
Ok, so it’s a slight departure from the usual family blogging, and many of these claims are pretty UK specific, but I’ve wanted to brag about some of them for ages.
But what I really want to know is what are your own brushes with greatness? I want everyone participating here, lurkers as well as the regular commenters. There is a spectacular prize for the winning entry – the exact nature of which is yet to be revealed.
Published by Dan at September 25, 2006
in General.
“It’s Mummy’s birthday tomorrow†I told Amy as I was putting her to bed this evening.
“I know,†she said “and it’s my birthday in Novebseptemberâ€.
Happy birthday Kerry. I rest easy in the knowledge that as you are six months older than me you’re always going to reach the nasty birthdays first.
Much as I’d love to claim credit for these marvoulous masterpieces, I can’t. They belong to a chap called Ashley Ringrose; see his flickr page here, or his blog here. I’ve posted them up here with his permission.
Kerry, Amy and I went on the Stork Walk this afternoon. This is basically a guided tour around the maternity unit of the local hospital in order to familiarise yourself with the location and facilities and suchlike. The tour commenced in fine NHS fashion with the midwife opening the doors to the delivery suit and exclaiming “Oh dear, there seems to have been a power cut in here for some reasonâ€. A current of alarmed concern shot through the room of heavily pregnant ladies, each no doubt imagining giving birth in the dead of night with their partners frantically striking match after match in order to give the doctors enough light to see what they are doing. Of course that is pure fantasy. None of them will probably even catch a smell of a doctor while they are there.
It transpired that the emergency generators were being tested that day, hence the brief power outages. The rest of the tour went alright, and everything seemed pretty much in order. I now know where the ward is and what to do about parking and all the kind of stuff that I really don’t want to have to be worrying about if we end up having to make a panicked dash to the hospital in the middle of the night.
Amy was very well behaved throughout the whole affair. She spent nearly an hour of being led from room to room without a single complaint. She was particularly impressed by the pneumatic beds, and also took great delight in telling all the staff on the ward that she had got some brand new shoes.
After the stork walk we went to a third birthday party. I was chatting to one of the other dads there who has recently had another child. He confirmed that our current lackadaisical attitude to the imminent approach of our second child was not unusual.
“I insisted on finishing cooking and eating my dinner before we went to the hospital.†He confided. “I was bloody starving all the way through the birth last time, I didn’t want that happening again.â€
He also told me that he forget to bring the maternity bags with him and had to go back home to fetch them: “She was already calling me a stupid bastard and she hadn’t even gone into labour yetâ€.
Published by Dan at September 22, 2006
in General.
Amy and I had been out visiting my mum for most of the morning. We had left Greg, our friend who is doing the decorating, finishing off Amy’s room; so I wasn’t surprised when he wasn’t there when we got back.
I went up to the nursery to see how it looked and breathe in those lovely paint fumes. Seeing the room in its near finished state I suddenly found myself being able to imagine it filled with all the sights and smells of a new baby, it really helped me get the whole “going to have a new baby†thing one step more solid in my mind.
Then I noticed the paint on the windowsill. It was very badly finished, with extremely prominent brush marks and even had the old paintwork exposed in places. My initial reaction was surprise, as Greg has always been pretty conscientious in all his previous work for us. Then I slowly came to the realisation that the irregularities in the gloss were not brush strokes after all, but the imprint of a dog’s paws sliding around on a slippy windowsill. This was confirmed when I looked down at the carpet and saw a distinctive set of white prints leading away from the window, out of the room, and down the stairs.
Bloody dogs.
Holly had obviously heard my car pull up, jumped up onto the sill, had a quick look out of the window, then rushed downstairs to greet me. It was my fault really for not telling Greg to close the nursery door. The paw prints on the landing and the stairs are barely noticeable, and fortunately all the paint on her feet had worn off by the time she was jumping all over my trousers. But there are definite tracks running through the nursery. Still, a lot of people pay good money to have wallpaper depicting animal prints adorning their children’s bedrooms. We just happen to have ours on the floor, that’s all.
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