Back to basics

Originally, just before Claire went into hospital expecting the pending arrival of young Master Jack, I wanted the blog to be about me and my experiences with regards to babies; it’s sort of drifted off-course a little of late and it’s ended up being a log of their activities and so on, and I want to get back to basics on that.

I think that why the blog ‘drifted’ into notes of their funny moments, is that Jack and subsequently Oliver, have since gone and developed their own characters, attitudes, personalities and so forth, and I guess at the time before Jack was born, I wasn’t expecting a ‘person’ to coming back home from hospital and was focusing on the fact that it was a ‘baby’… a generic, non-descript baby, that we happened to have named. 

You have to bear in mind, here, that as stated in blog post 1, I hadn’t had close family members with children, nor did I get that involved with those of good friends, which I could have done I suppose, but will leave that for another blog-day.  My point being, that I had no real appreciation of babies and the effort that they demand of a parent. (Pretty good job, too, as it might well have put me off!)

Looking back, it’s kind of difficult/weird for a to-be/first-time dad, as these babies almost just appear, yet take 9 months to do so. It’s not so much of a surprise when they do, but for the women with it growing inside of her, there’s a presence all day every day, (and although they let it be known!!) but for the men, it’s just someone else’s belly that gets fatter and fatter.  And then woomph, there’s a baby, that then cries and poos all the time at silly o’clock at night.

At the time of both Jack and Oli being born, it was pretty much “there-and-then” with it all, namely, understanding and managing a baby, on a day-to-day basis. Trying to imagine how they’d look, act, behave as a toddler, 4 year old, 6 year old, etc, was just out of the question, but looking back at photos and videos, their development is abundantly clear - the photos almost map-out the transition stages from generic same-as-everyone-else’s wrinkly, crying, poo-machine to now, being my two boys.

Maybe, because Oliver is becoming more and more independent (as a child) that we’ve been used to with Jack, that Claire and I have had more time to chill out and relax a little. For a while now, Oli has been toilet-trained, such that he can take himself to the toilet and not wear nappies and all that, going places is a billion times easier. There’s no nappy bag, twelve changes of clothes to lug around. As we’re able to do this and get real-time verbal feedback from them as to their state, we can plan things, as opposed to re-act, if you get my drift.  Being given advance notice that we need to stop the car for a wee is much more civilised than either Claire or I having to grope the crotch of our children periodically to check if they’re ‘packing’. Or worse, getting that waft of poo drift through-out the car, and then almost smelling it for hours later.

More fascinating insights from Brett’s brain next time, but this is almost like the line in the proverbial sand, so to speak.