It's been a long, long time

...since I penned anything on this.

But I have been doing some thinking and would like to meander away at some thoughts as blog posts because they are easier to write. So, maybe, just maybe I'll start posting again. But here first, before I move over to our more public blog.

It all depends on life, which is mostly hard. And health, which is so often not good. And time, which runs through our fingers like sand.

It's good to have words again though. It would be good to say them 'out loud'!

Favourite Toy of the Week: The Fridge

Yes, that's right folks. This is the week that JD discovered the fridge.

This week he not only worked out that the fridge was full of 'toys', evidently placed there for his amusement, but he learned how to open the fridge, close it, dismantle the shelving and open and shut the cheese containers.

Briefly, he also discovered eggs, the way to take the top of the tomato sauce bottom and attempt to suck out the tomato sauce and how to appropriate celery. These explorations were curtailed, due to the totalitarian regime pursued by his unsympathetic mother.

Apart from these small details, he spent most of the week standing inside the fridge, talking to all the bottles and jars and sometimes singing a special fridge song. He took out all the bottles and jars, chased them around the kitchen and sometimes even put them back in (usually in the vegetable crisper), before starting all over again. It worked quite well because he is just the right height to stand inside the fridge, and it is a lot warmer in the fridge than it is outside at the moment.

He's the original 'frund in the frudge'.

My Holiday by JD

I went to the sea-side with my mummy and daddy. Daddy did all the heavy lifting and mummy took lots of photos.


I played in the sand and tried to crawl out to sea. I discovered stones and sand and sea-caps. I wanted to eat the sea-cap but daddy wouldn't let me.

I held daddy's hands and walked in the water, which was really cool. I wanted to keep walking and walking because I really liked the water. Daddy kept pulling me back. I can see there's going to be some issues we'll have to work through.

Then I played in the sand some more and got to at least eat some of that, but sand is more fun if you cover your arms and legs with it, and make patterns in it with your hands.

It was lots of fun and I mean to go back. When I do, I'll ditch the parents and crawl out to sea and then come back and eat all the sea-caps I want.

Domestic Animalia

One of the odd things about having a small child is the constant need to talk about domestic animals with them. True, you could probably avoid it if you were so inclined, but it might have a negative impact on their socialisation.

I realised this during 'Rhyme Time' last month. I sing 'Old MacDonalds Farm' and 'The Farmer in the Dell' to JD along with various other animal based songs. But frankly it was all getting a bit boring and so I introduced another lot of more interesting animals. The echidna, camel, iguana and various other creatures now inhabit Old MacDonalds farm, making it more educational for JD and more interesting for me. Though I still haven't really figured out what noise an echidna makes.

And on one very hot and long afternoon when there were teeth coming, 'The Farmer in the Dell' became a narrative framework for an involved story including the Albatross, his friend the Mongoose and the Mongoose's friend Switch who had a small army of cockroaches in a cardboard box, which he carried about his person. This was unsettling for the Albatross, but due to social constraints he felt unable to protest. However, the army of cockroaches proved its usefulness by forcing Pirate Sam the Man to stand down from his piracy, at least as it related to Albatross, Mongoose and Switch. All ended happily.

The problem is though, that when we were at Rhyme Time, the older children were given the opportunity of choosing an animal from a bag and saying what that animal was for Old MacDonald's farm. One child pulled a duck out of the bag and announced it was a duck. I thought, "How boring. Why does it need to be a duck? Why can't it be an albatross?" Which led me to the realisation that if I keep finding odd and interesting animals on Old MacDonalds Farm, JD will come to expect them. He'll want dolphins, elephant beetles and moles when he calls out his favourite, and that is if we manage to teach him in time that griffins, murlocs and yetis are actually not real.

I came home from Rhyme Time frustrated. Levor said to me, "So what do we learn from this little adventure?" I said, "That Rhyme Time is limited and needs its horizons expanded."

I don't think that the answer I was meant to give...

Corn

I can't smile now. I'm eating corn.

I'm going to look this way. Eating corn requires concentration. Eventually she'll go away.
Nope. Not gonna smile. At all. Eating corn now.

I can outlast you.

Idiosyncratic. Eccentric even.

That's our boy.

I had in my head that any children we had would constantly be in a state of bemusement when it came to their parents. We are odd people. We know that. We could try not to be odd people but it really doesn't work. So we are just eccentric and we like each other, so, hey.

But for some reason I thought we would have normal children who would consider us with the same level of bemusement that many people do.

Instead I find myself thinking that our boy is a bit odd. I never think that about people, because even if they are odd they usually so much less odd than I am that I can't in good conscience think that. But JD? Well, let me tell you about two of his oddities.


Crop circles.

Yes. As he is going to sleep, JD flings himself onto his stomach and starts to draw circles on each side of him with the palms of his hands. It is useful in that it is clear that he is on the way to sleep, but it is rather unusual. If anything interrupts the crop circling, he starts to wake up again. He doesn't just crop circle against the sheets, but if I am holding him, he'll crop circle against me.

We are weird, yes. But neither of us crop circle.

The other weird thing JD does is bite my nose. This is his pet project if he is ever in the vicinity of my face. He never tries this with Levor, (who has a handy beard to pull anyway). But from about 6 months, he's been focussed on giving my nose a good bite, if he can pull it off. This was particularly impressive when he was a bit younger and less co-ordinated. He'd have to hitch himself up, then line himself up and then let go of whatever he was holding onto, landing with his mouth around my nose.

He even managed it a few times. I got used to listening for the panting (exertion of positioning himself), the dribble (from the ready-opened mouth) and the absolute quiet (intense concentration). In the presence of these three factors I knew my nose was in danger and I need to move. Once in the absence of dribble (and when I was so very tired), I didn't move. It turned out that he was undertaking the same process only with a pacifier in his mouth. He managed to execute this without losing the pacifier. It is the weirdest sensation I have ever experienced: having my nose bitten by someone sucking a pacifier at the same time.

I have to say, I am impressed that he actually has a method worked out for this procedure and that it involves quite a bit of skill. I just can't boast about it to all the other mums though, without seeming.... weird.

So, there you have it. JD is a little bit odd.


How cool. He's just like us. He's our boy.

Benediction

You know those moments in life, the ones where you realise something significant is happening and you're far too relaxed and 'in the moment' to really take everything in. You feel that you should be remembering every word, every intonation of what is being said. You say to yourself, "This is perfectly extraordinary! This will never happen again." And you try and concentrate.

But you're really enjoying it too much to memorise it.

Something like that happened the other week. We were at church, and so were some friends of ours from Australia. These friends happened to be Important People, which is incidental, but important for the story.

One of these friends came up to me while I was talking and carted Jonathan off for a cuddle. This, in itself was rather nice. Not that I mind being responsible for Jonathan, but in those idyllic families with aunts and uncles and grandparents and lavish amounts of kindness, children are cuddled and passed from hand to hand and so forth. I know this because in the childcare books I read it tells me how to handle that.

Anyway, I flitted around talking to people and eventually found the two of them out in the courtyard sitting in the sun. I looked over and thought, "He is an important person. I probably shouldn't disturb him." But then I remembered that everyone thinks this about important people and so they get a bit lonely sometimes. So I went over, and he motioned me to sit down and just as I was racking my brains for some kind of meaningless smalltalk, he started to pray.

It was a Simeon-in-the-temple kind of prayer: rich, full of blessing and interest and an expression of genuine care for the person that the baby is and will become. He prayed that Jonathan would be kept safe and grow strong; that he would grow into a man who knew how to love others; that Jonathan would never know a time when he didn't know and love the Lord Jesus and would always serve and honour him; and that Jonathan might become a man of God.

It was a remarkable prayer. I would love to listen to it again, though as I was not the recipient of the prayer it is less significant that I remember it.

One day, when this Important Person remains in this world only in legend, I'll tell Jonathan about this prayer for him. And I'll tell him how people who owed him nothing loved him and were kind to him. And how they blessed him.

This, in itself is a blessing.