Count the ways

It’s so easy to adore babies. The tiny weeny hands and feet, the new smile flickering like a broken neon sign, the evolution from squashed little old man to chubby cherub.

In the year that follows their birth, time for adoration is gradually eaten away by patchy sleep, illness scares, and incidences of ‘Now what do I do?!’; then toddlerdom arrives, and we wring our hands at the tantrums and opinions (NO!) and willpower (MINE!), and adoration seems a distant memory.

Yet lately I have come to realise I am enjoying this stage of my son’s development as much, if not more, than all previous. I won’t deny that part of this is his new and apparently durable habit of sleeping from 8pm to 6am, a truly amazing development for a human being who once nursed every two hours morning and night, and was still waking at least once a night a mere month ago. I take no credit for this; we have been observing much the same bedtime routine since he was one. He sleeps wonderfully during the day, too—today he even voluntarily went to his cot to nap. That’s the big change: he comprehends what it is to feel tired, and knows that lying down and having a snooze when you do feels good.

So what do I adore about my 22 month old?

He announces ‘HUG!’ at the drop of a hat and rushes over to envelop me in a miniature bear hug.

He kisses my husband goodbye in the mornings, but hasn’t quite got the pout right, producing a sort of affectionate chipmunk look with two upper teeth showing.

He proceeds everywhere at an urgent trot, often while babbling vowel sounds to himself, so I always know where he I-I-I-I-S because I can H-EA-EA-EA-EA-R him B-OU-OU-OU-OUNCING along (this is my current favourite thing).

He is gaining several words a day, and I never know which he’ll imitate next – among ‘helicopter’ (“DOT-DAH!”) and ‘blue’ (“BOO”) is ‘happy’ and ‘pasta’ (“PAH!-STAH”).

He often says ‘thank you’ (“ANK-GOO”).

His heart is entirely on his sleeve: when he’s excited, he’ll jump up and down on the spot; when he’s surprised or intrigued, he’ll do the biggest :-O face you’ve ever seen; when he laughs, he abandons himself to hilarity.

Toddlers are a new kind of adorable – interactive, challenging, and independent. They need you but don’t always want you. They build (and strain) your patience muscles, run straight for the traffic, collapse in your lap. The same courage they use to get to the top of the slide and down with a “Wheeee!” gets them onto the chair and then the dining table, again. There can be no fair weather friends here; toddlers are proof that it is possible to love someone who is driving you crazy. HUG!

Great British Sewing Bee

I am indebted to Miss Celie’s Pants for pointing me to YouTube uploads of the BBC’s new reality show Great British Sewing Bee, an instantly addictive program for anyone who’s ever unpicked a seam. I love the variety of contestants they’ve found, and am intrigued by their different routes to sewing—even though this show is clearly focusing on garment sewing, at least two of the sewists* specialise in quilting or home dec, and one is a marvellous historical costume creator. There are two men! And one lady is 81! And Tania drafts her own patterns even though she’s only been sewing for two years!!

The most heartening thing about the show is witnessing how often really competent sewists make mistakes. This is a minor revelation for me: at some point in my childhood I got the idea that if you were good at something, you did it well all the time; ergo, if you made a mistake, it was a sign you were Bad At It and should stop. This is a colossally stupid wrong bad thing to think, and to this day I have to remind myself that persisting through mistakes is what makes you good at anything, so it’s enormously helpful to see people capable of turning out wonderful garments in a matter of hours** running into problems along the way.

Judging by the comments at Miss Celie’s Pants and the YouTube videos I am not the only one relishing the show, so I hope some kind Brits continue to upload eps for those of us beyond the reach of iPlayer.

*The online sewing community eschews ‘sewers’ on the grounds that it makes you think of an underground conduit for carrying off waste matter; I was delighted to note the presenter said ‘sewist’ during one episode.

**That sounds like a long time, but every project I’ve ever made has taken longer than I expected. You can spend your first hour just cutting out all your pattern pieces sometimes.

Evidenced-Based Parenting Blog Carnival

I went looking for answers and all I got were facts. I hate it when that happens.

Excellent parenting blog Science of Mom is hosting a blog carnival about preschooling at the moment, and if you’re someone who likes to exercise their decision-making muscles with a lot of background data you will be in heaven reading the contributors’ articles. Quantifying the effects of preschool on young children is exceptionally difficult, but what has been teased out suggests play-based curricula cater best to children’s natural curiosity and creativity, and that if you’re providing a supportive home environment with story times and fun activities, your child will thrive anywhere.

On the ambivalent feminism of ‘The Tiger Who Came to Tea’

After weeks of reading the same story every nap- and bed-time, one’s recitation becomes automatic, leaving the mind free to ponder the text on deeper levels.

Case in point: The Tiger Who Came to Tea, the classic million+ selling British children’s book by Judith Kerr.

At first glance, the gender roles portrayed here are a little grating. Faced with empty cupboards and recently devoured tea, the mother in the story opines, “I don’t know what to do. I’ve got nothing for Daddy’s supper, the tiger has eaten it all.” Daddy’s supper? Isn’t it the whole family’s supper? When the father returns home—and I do love his hat-off, ‘ta da!’ pose in the doorway—his wife and daughter describe the recent feline visitation, arms wide in alarm. Father, resourceful in the face of voracious wild cat incursions, makes the rather obvious suggestion that they all go out and eat at a café, a proposal the text frames as heroically decisive. To a café they therefore repair, where—in a sentence that puzzled me greatly as a child—they “had a lovely supper of sausages and chips and ice cream.” (Why would you want ice cream with your sausages and chips, asked juvenile I?) The next day, Sophie and her mother take up the female part and restock the pantry.

Too harsh? There are some pluses for the XX chromosome column. It must be acknowledged that Sophie and her mother greet the arrival of a talking tiger on their doorstep with admirable equanimity. Sophie’s mother wins all of the savoir-faire points for responding to the tiger’s rapid consumption of her well-laden luncheon table with a solicitous, ‘Would you like some tea?’ (Did she attend a finishing school, one wonders?) Equally, neither character shows any sign of panic as the tiger prowls around the kitchen consuming every available comestible, not least items in packets and tins (a detail which leads us to ask whether they not only declined to resist, but actually cooperated with the intruder). And, distressed though she is at the loss of their supper, Sophie’s mother is calm enough in the face of crisis to attempt to give Sophie a bath and change her into her pyjamas immediately the tiger departs. Perhaps a touch of hand-waving is forgivable in light of the day’s challenging events.

Lastly, if Sophie’s daddy didn’t propose a treat at the local caff he would actually have no lines in the book at all, so he’s not exactly a dominant persona. And Sophie and her mum have the presence of mind to stock up on tiger food, suggesting they feel equal to the task should their stripy visitor stage a repeat performance.

Long story short (or, in fact, short story shorter): showing its age a bit, however the overt Dad-Will-Know-What-To-Do-ism is counterbalanced by a subtle Women-Remaining-Calm-in-a-Crisis vibe.

Further titles in the How Lit Grads’ Minds Wander When Putting Their Children To Sleep series include ‘Subliminal Christian Messages in The Very Hungry Caterpillar‘; ‘The insecure passive-aggression of ‘You Are My Sunshine’; and the soothing bedtime metaphor at work in ‘Rock-a-bye-baby’ (synopsis: tree/wind/falling = parent’s arms/rocking/putting to bed, no?).

Thoughts engendered by craft activities

It was a sad day when pipe cleaners were re-named ‘chenille twists’.

The amount of time it takes to set up a given craft activity (mixing and cooking playdough, 20 mins; opening pack of fuzzy pompoms, 5 secs) is inversely proportional to how long your toddler will want to spend playing with it (5 mins; 30 mins).

Assume any material your child plays with will end up on any and every other surface in the home (floor, computer, clothes), even if you strand said child in a highchair and institute a totalitarian hand-wiping regime.

Destructive beats constructive every time. A pile of blocks? Meh. A tower I can knock down? Whee!

 

In which Butterick goes a bit doolally

New B5853 dress pattern

There isn’t a necklace in the world fancy enough to distract us from that…what is that? Ah, a “front inset, two-piece bow” sez Butterick. I see. It’s really such a lovely dress; as the pic downloads you’re all, ‘Ooo, lacy shoulders’, ‘Aaah, sweetheart bodice’ and then POW: Bow Thing arrives! AKA the handles your solar plexus never knew it needed. I’m trying to fathom the reasoning here: did the dress sans Boob Flanges look too much like an old design, so they had to differentiate it somehow? Is this in fact the only decorative element in the history of fashion that hasn’t been tried before?

Because if so, I think we can all see why.

I’m guessing a lot of people will make up this otherwise excellent dress and accidentally just sew those middle seams right up, whoops, oh well, no room for the front inset two-piece bow after all, maybe next time…

Times of clouds and sun

Another nap time spent researching toddler moods and parental mistakes. Have we failed the Great Schedule, Ruler of Infants? How does a child of two wilting, yawning, eye-rubbing parents hide his ‘sleep signs’ so successfully? And now that I’ve got him to sleep after a true three-act tragedy, ear-splitting soundtrack no extra charge, should I be a) doing chores, b) resting, c) doing one of the Things I keep castigating myself for not completing (novel, immense complex cross-stitch design, various sewing projects), or d) a chaotic mix of all of the above, as usual?

Part of the problem is jetlag I’m sure, as we returned from a blissful month in southern climes just last week, and only today have I managed to keep my eyes open past 3pm (tertiary concern: I must be getting old, it didn’t use to take this long to adapt; and gosh doesn’t that look ungrammatical written down, “didn’t use”?). Parental confusion is also a factor, as in October it seemed Finn was shifting to just one early afternoon nap a day, before a volley of colds hit him (one a week until we went away, ghastly) and he reverted to two. While we were away he kept up the twice-a-day habit, but quite what he wants to do now, given he is healthy again and full of beans, I am unsure.

The beans he is full of led him to attempt jumping yesterday, under the influence of his bounding father. I heard his feet leave (or rather re-connect with) the floor several times but I’m not sure he’s quite got the foot coordination sorted out. Today he spent quite some time walking backwards, and even had the presence of mind to periodically look behind him to see whether he was about to reverse into a solid object. He has become quite conscious of the unforgiving nature of walls, and points them out to me several times a day before miming a whack to the head as though to say, ‘Walls hurt Finn!’.

Finn was not a naturally schedulable baby and during last year’s frustrations I developed a rule that I would not spend more than 20 minutes trying to get him to nap: if we hadn’t succeeded in that time I got him up again and we gave it another go later. It might be time to reinstitute that policy until our body clocks realign themselves with the gloomy northern winter hours, particularly as a new toddler-tantrumish vibe has entered proceedings that is even more exasperating to the well-meaning parent than mere infantile screaming. Beyond that, I will aim for a more definite daily schedule, one that is adhered to yay even unto weekends, and we will see if we can cut down on the wailing and gnashing of teeth.