5841/18861
Sixteen years on. 5841 days later.
I had another energy-destroying day of childcare, as my wife churned out the words for her next book in the attic. As always I marvelled that anyone could be a parent on their own, even with one child let alone three or more.
At least a three and a half year old can talk, but that doesn’t always make it easy to understand. Phoebe is very excited about Christmas and wanting us to play Christmas songs. She asked for what sounded like “Santa’s Sock”, which we didn’t know, but when we said, “Santa’s Sock?” she’d say, “No, Santa’s SOCK”. We suggests “Santa’s Stocking” “Santa’s Song” and finally my wife thought she’d got it, “Santa’s stuck in the chimney?”
“Nooooo! Santa’s Sock!”
We asked how it went and Phoebe sang “Santa’s Sock, do do doo do do” which made us laugh as it sounded like someone making it all up.
“What’s the second word?” I’d ask and she’d just say “Santa’s Sock” and occasionally sing a tuneless do do doo do do”.
“Describe it with another word…”
“Santa’s Sock!”
She was frustrated. So were we. And laughing obviously. Her seriousness and anger as she said "Santa's Sock do do doo do do" and having no other clue how to express it made it hard to keep a straight face. Imagine if there was a song that bad.
Catie googled Santa and do do doo do do and found out it was a song called
“Christmas Shark” and to be fair Phoebe had sung it pretty much perfectly.
How had we not got Shark?
It’s weird when kids start picking up stuff from somewhere else: neither Catie and I were aware of the Baby Shark phenomenon. I suppose this will keep happening and the music will get mildly more sophisticated...
It’s not just the physical exhaustion, but the emotional journey and the fact that however vigilant you are disaster is only moments away. My son was playing with the plug sockets as usual today, which I do not condone, so I moved in quickly to stop him. He took a step backwards and stumbled and fell very gently against the wall in the corner. He slid to the floor. It was a very minor impact, but it made him cry, the big baby. Later he would essentially head-butt the TV cabinet and walk away laughing, but babies are contrary little twats.
I hugged him to try and make him feel better, because I am an amazing dad, but he seemed more perturbed than usual. As I cradled his head I felt some moisture and then I looked at my hands and there was blood. My son’s blood was literally on my hands. As the blood was coming from beneath his hair, it wasn’t clear how bad this wound was, but it was already enough to freak me out. Mainly because I couldn’t understand how he’d cut himself, but also, you know, was he going to die? I assumed he must have caught his head on the hinge of the wardrobe as he fell, but what was more important now was working out how to stop the blood. And I had no idea about where anything that might do that was and was freaked out by the blood, so obviously I called my wife. I am pretty calm in most situations and Catie can get quite agitated by small things (like me being a dick), but roles were reversed here and she was focused in a crisis, whilst I wanted to cry. We sorted it out together (by which I mean I went and got the box of medical supplies once she told me where she’d hidden it and then she did the rest) and it turned out that it was the most minor of abrasions (it had seemed a bit worse because the blood had gathered in Ernie’s hair) and it was all forgotten (by Ernie at least) within minutes.
Later after the tough day, with the end of my tether reached and me clinging on to it with my finger nails, I got a bit emotional about it all and tears formed in my eyes and my voice wavered. It was as if I was doing the first interview on Pointless, knowing that I was about to be knocked out. Yes, that bad.
It was just relief and shock and exhaustion and me imagining how things might have gone if luck had been more against me. And also it’s not nice having baby’s blood on you. It’s something you really want to avoid if possible.
Catie finally rescued me at 6.30pm and took Ernie up to the bath and I played with Phoebe who is now pretty much capable of looking after herself (though still a daredevil so you’re never totally safe, but at least she isn’t obsessed with playing with the most dangerous thing in every room). She’d found my two Penguin Race games from my tour, which were in a box in the hall ready to go up to the attic. She wanted to set one of them up. Her own version of the game, which inspired my routine has become scattered round the house - a couple of her penguins were on a shelf in the lounge. I realised between the three games we had 8 or 9 penguins. What would happen if we put them all one one game?
The best thing that has ever existed is the answer.
As much as I’d love to fill the whole contraption with penguins, that wouldn’t actually be much fun. You can really only have as many penguins as there are steps (possibly two or three more) and if you filled it you'd just have shuffling penguins queuing to get on the stairs and then being stuck at the back of the queue once you’d reached the top. So this number of penguins was perfect. And this experiment together made all the hardships of the day melt away.
What could be cooler than this?
Could I have guessed 16 years ago as I got on a tube out of Balham, that I’d be living in the countryside and showing my 3 year old what happens when you put loads of penguins on an annoying game? No, obviously I couldn’t.
Would I be happy to know that this is where my life had gone? I think I’d have been quite happy just to find out I was still alive. And I’d be pleased to know that I had a family. And that I was still a childish idiot in spite of it all?
Looking back, that 16 years younger me was living a life that seems incomprehensible to me now. He is not me and I am not him. And yet here we are, connected by a string of 5841 missives and like working out at what point the thing that wasn’t quite a chicken evolved into a chicken, there’s no way of knowing when he disappeared and I turned up. I am glad he started this. He may have been appalled to think that I carried it on. Was it meant to last this long?
He knew himself. To an extent. He must have known it was a possibility.
Anyway, happy birthday to the blog. You’re a grown up now. Unlike me.
