Aoife The Subtle

I wish!
Despite the lack of development in the speech arena Aoife has no problem telling her Daddy to put a sock in it. When I block her arse shuffling path on the floor, for a little face to face chat, she will either engage, by getting all goo goo, by touching my face or just staring with a polite smile at my well intentioned ramblings. Alternatively she will put anything she can find into my mouth and proceed on her merry way.
This I fear is a characteristic I will have to accept as the years shuffle along.

Noisy Neighbour

I went to the movies the other day and settled down to watch my film with the customery $20 worth of cinematic cuisine. The movie began and almost immediately this bloke to my right started to repeat everything the Turtles were saying. He squealed at the not so scary bits and kept trying to tell me what was going on. He ate most of my popcorn and jumped onto my lap three minutes into the movie. He shat himself at one stage and had the audicity to seek my assistance in cleaning up the unholy mess. But my noisy neighbours most heinous crime was to turn to me 10 minutes before the end of the movie and say "finished". I walked out of the cinema with my sleepy, boneless, boy in my arms wondering if he would return the favour in 50 years time. Pleasant dreams Euey Boy.

First Laugh

23rd April 2007. No grandiloquence required. I heard my daughter laugh for the first time today and the experience added 42 wrinkles to my brow. Somebody let the Hitchhiker know.

Home Alone

The house is quiet. But it will never be really empty again. Sitting on our sofa with my laptop living up to its name I write about the hive of activity in the house while I sit here alone.

I can here Euey's frenetic flip flop flip flop coming towards me down the hallway, sadly without the ultimate divebomb on to my person. I can hear Aoife to my side, in her cot, winning the heart of a bulgy eyed bug, sadly I'm chaperoning a memory. I can hear Georgie in the kitchen humming Roy's "Only the ronery". Sadly I can't kiss her neck and tell her "I rove her"

My family are away for a night, only a night.

Time is not a constant, this has been one long day.

I eagerly await your return, you collective yumminess.

Aoife

Yeah, they know I'm the boss.

I am writing this one handed. Aoife is in my other one. You will have gathered by now that she is the most beautiful 2 week old that has ever existed but I'll wager you didn't know the following. She has made me cry 12 times since she was born. She has recently beat George on the flatulence decibel chart. She weighed 2.56 Kilos when we left the hospital but weighed 3.25 kilos 5 days later, she almost drank the old twin engine dry. When the mood grabs her she has the strength and endurance of a Wiggle, it's like wrestling and being beaten by a silk scarf. Her clothes fit her feet perfectly but hang off the rest of her body. Why am I the only member of this family with small feet? She smells like her mum. That's not loaded by the way, I love their smell. She is smiling right now, I know it's just wind but it is a preview of the real thing and if poet's can have a licence then why not daddies. Bye for now I'm in the middle of number 13.

Please

Please let me out!

Euey has learned how to communicate the concept of please, if not the word. We have somehow managed to teach him that a quick shrug of his shoulders with the left one going up and the right one going down, accompanied with the vocals of "gung" means please. You have to sing it to appreciate it. Try it it's truely bizzare. Where did it come from? Who knows but I would hazzard a guess it came from his mothers side. Not right in the head that lot.

A reoccurring trend I have happened upon with my son is his ability to turn a negative into a positive or, if you like, wrap a scornful father around his little finger. An apt example springs to mind. Christmas 2006 Euan at 18 months had prematurely reached the terrible two’s. In one of his destructive sorties he discovered a newly positioned and fully decorated Christmas tree. With pathological haste he proceeded to undress our perfectly attired tree. I called out his name at a socially unacceptable decibel. He stopped for a moment but started again with renewed vigour, seeming to remember the “bark worse than the bite” theory he had recently embraced. I tried again but this time I called his name in a low drawn out voice accompanied with my index finger performing the generic ‘come here’ gesture. This was new, I had his attention. He tried to copy me but managed to move all the fingers except the index finger in the correct way. The index finger stood frozen. He laughed at his own inability to imitate me and then focused again on my finger and I could see the cogs turning as he figured out the instruction I was trying to relay. He got it and laughed his odd socks off as he came running and launched himself into my arms. The tree wasn’t interfered with again that night but thereafter he kept approaching it and pausing before he touched it to wait for the initial finger instruction, once received, he would give a cheeky look and feint touching the tree anyway. This was my cue to sound angry and intensify the finger wagging to which he would crumble and come running meekly for a cuddle. Who was pulling whose strings? He got the fingers wrong but I was well and truly wrapped around them nonetheless, fait accompli I would suggest.