On the wet patch.

What is more exciting to a one and a half year old than a pile of crackly autumn leaves?

A damn big puddle that’s what.

Splosh splash splish.

Thank you the great British weather, which has outdone itself in wetness this past month, for bringing you this revelation.

And thank you wellington boots.

They do save you from having to drag an incandescently cross toddler past every enticing limpid pool of water between you and, well, anywhere you might care to go at the moment.

Of course, you don’t have any boots. You just have sopping trouser cuffs.

Because previously, you had considered the fashion for wearing brightly coloured wellies on the streets of the capital the pedestrian equivalent of driving a 4X4. Pointless and without the saving grace of having any kind of style.

Although fashion has moved on a bit and now it’s riding boots. Next year young urban women will be tramping down to model farms to hug a well washed lamb.

Marie Antoinette playing at being a shepherdess.

But you can’t let the Star jig up and down in the middle of a puddle on his own, can you?

Bring on the inappropriate footwear.

On advent calendars.

Your Mother always made sure you and your Brother had an advent calendar.

It was, inevitably, religiously themed. Extracts from the Christmas story part of the bible with page numbers.

In buying it she was also, inevitably, contributing towards some worthy cause. And, also inevitably, it couldn’t have got much more ethnic if it were hand-woven by indigenous mountain people in Outer Somewhereorother from the hair of hand reared goats to the strains of Peruvian nose pipes while someone nearby prepared something mushy, using their hands and bowls carved from the living bark of thousand-year-old rainforest trees, out of beans, for tea. Although sometimes they were African subcontinent themed. Baby Jesus surrounded by elephants, gazelles and lions in perfect harmony sort of thing.

But there never were any chocolates.

And the two things combined, rampant middle-class consumerist icons and a total lack of frivolous sweet provision, rather annoyed you as a kid. When you were small, you used to gaze longingly at the brightly coloured, Father Christmas and all his Elves themed, glitter coated, sugar high bearing calendars as you were whisked past them in supermarkets and shops throughout December.

But there’s nothing like nostalgia, and so you were all prepared to go out there and buy a calendar which resembled a cross between a gathering of the United Nations and the interior of a Catholic cathedral, when your other pitched up with a present which rendered that unnecessary.

An advent calendar of his very own. Filled from the 1st door to the 24th with large chocolate hearts.

You were speechless, and that doesn’t happen very often.

Luckily for family harmony it also has the words FAIRTRADE emblazoned prominently all over it.

Anyway. New family tradition. When Granny gives the Star an advent calendar with a chocolate behind each door, you will phone her up so she can listen to him eating that day’s.

On NaBloPoMo 2009

So. I did it. Thirty posts in thirty days. In fact, I think it’s thirty-one posts.

Unfortunately, I missed a day by a few minutes back there somewhere so I didn’t exactly do it.

It’s a technical loss, or a moral victory depending on whether the glass is half empty or half full.

Been fun though. Same time next year?

On The Son Rising.

BUSY young fool, unruly Son,
Why dost thou thus,
Through walls, and through duvets, call on me?
Must to thy motions Mama’s seasons run?
Saucy pedantic babe, go chide
Late Papas and sour Babushkas,
Go tell thy tricycle that the Prince will ride,
Call Clapham’s commuters to harvest offices;
Mama’s sleeps, all alike, no season knows nor clime,
Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.

Thy shouts so reverend, and so strong
Why should’st thou think?
I could dampen and cloud them with a pillow,
But that I would not lose your sound for long,
Despite my screams have deafened thine.

Look, and to-morrow late tell me,
Whether both th’ tippy trucks of spice and mine
Be where I left’st them, or lie here now with me.
Ask for those toys whom thou saw’st yesterday,
And thou shalt hear, “All here in one bed lay.”

Thee – all toddler, and all in a state I;
Nothing else is;
Toddlers do but play with stacking cups; compared to this,
All honour’s mimic, all wealth alchemy.
Thou, Son, art half again happy as me,
In that the world’s contracted thus;
Thine age asks constant attention, and since thy duties be
To wake the world, that’s done in waking me.

Oh go on then, come here to me… now thou art everywhere;
This bed thy trampoline is, these walls thy easel.

With apologies to John Donne and The Sun Rising, and thanks to the inspiration of Niqui’s latest Favourite Friday and Johnny Pez’ Tolkien pastiche.

On rites of passage.

Today the Star phoned the emergency services.

This is not necessarily a bad thing

On a Bilingual Carnival.

You have discovered that you are more nervous about your attempt to bring the Star up bilingually than you thought you’d be.

Getting it right is important to B, and might have a bit of an impact on the future Star as well.

So it was comforting to stumble across a perambulating Bilingual Carnival* where people in the same boat as you share their experiences and expertise. This month it’s hosted at Babelkid. It’s a good read for anyone interested in language, language development, kids, kids and language development, multiculturalism and its impact on the individual and chocolate.

OK, so you lied about the chocolate.

There’s a schedule and a newsletter if anyone feels like getting involved.

*And, incidentally the concept of Online Carnivals in general. You like being down with the Weirdos. Or at least running desperately behind them waving your bag of sweeties in an attempt to make friends with their technology.

On personal pronouns.

The Star is supposed to find pronouns confusing. Someone who is ’she’ in one situation, can suddenly start being ‘you’ or ‘I’, ‘we’, ‘they’ or possibly even ‘he’ in another. “But my name is ‘you’,” the Star is assumed to be thinking. “What’s going on?”

So you have spent the last seventeen months sounding as though you are commentating someone else’s life, as if it wasn’t enough that you are now forced into talking constantly about every last detail of the weather. The colour, texture, smell and taste of food on its way down and up and out. The movement of squirrels, dogs, passers-by, cars, buses, taxis, vans, motorbikes, trains, boats, planes, helicopters and leaves. The shape of your ears. The exact amount of pain you feel when the Star yanks your hair, bites your leg or pinches your cheeks. The reason why crapping on the carpet or widdling on the kitchen floor is not a good idea. The correct method of washing up. How to separate clothes for washing. Why books should not have pages ripped out. The fine art of putting toys away. And the importance of sleep.

By this time the Star has heard his immediate family’s names ever and over and over again. Yet oddly enough, despite being able to respond confidently and accurately when asked to point to any number of everyday objects, the three words the Star seems to have trouble with are ‘Mama’, ‘Papa’ and ‘Babushka’.

He can be relied upon to point at B when asked where his Mummy is and you for his Daddy. Or sometimes at you for both or B for both. Sometimes he just points at his Babushka. Sometimes he points at you when asked where his Babushka is. Or B. Very occasionally he gets it all right, but you can’t help but think it’s a fluke.

You wonder whether it’s because he just sees you three as interchangeable food and fun producing units.

Or whether it’s because he can’t separate each of the people around him out because you are using names, which doesn’t allow for a clear distinction between self and others.

On getting in touch with your sensitive side.

The MiL has taught the Star to cuddle his teddy bears.

Of course, he looks a lot like a Bond villain petting a cat while he does it.

But it’s far far more amusing when he cradles and strokes his toy cars.

On twinkletoes.

The Star has discovered dancing. You can’t think where he’s picked this up from. You don’t have a habit of leaping round the living room when a really good song comes on the radio at all.

Anyway, the Star will bop around in his high chair while listening to his portable radio. But it’s when he’s got a bit more space and Papa is listening to Planet Rock that he really likes to go for it.

He spins!

He hops up and down!

He runs on the spot!

He shakes his head from side to side.

And he’s got this one move where he waves one hand above his head and does a sort galloping movement that makes him look as though he’s in some dance off with a cowboy.

It’s all most peculiar and he has about as much sense of rhythm as B, but really very, very cute.

On the folly of youth.

Somewhere around the house you have these cutoffs.

You made them when you were eighteen or thereabouts and liked nothing better than to scruff around in DMs, band tops and jeans.

These cutoffs are no ordinary cutoffs, however.

They are covered in quotes.

No, you don’t know why you still have them.

Probably they will come in handy when the Star starts dressing in black and calling himself Slime. At least, you will say to yourself, he hasn’t spent a few hours biroing a bunch of quotes neatly all over a pair of cutoffs and then gone out in public in them.

Of course, they do also sum up the dog days of your teenage years to a T. No further memoirising required.

 ’Curiouser and curiouser!’ cried Alice – L Carroll.

All kings is mostly rapscallions – M Twain.

I wouldn’t take up religion permanently – R Gere.

I require three things in a man: he must be handsome, ruthless and stupid – D Parker.

Dance, you scruffy bastards – Levellers.

God created woman to tame man – Voltaire.

‘Forty-two,’ said Deep Thought with infinite majesty and calm – D Adams.

It’s the end of the world as we know it (and I feel fine) – REM

All men, gods, and planets in this story are imaginary. Any coincidence of names is regretted – Robert A Heinlein.

Does History record any case where the majority was right? L Long.

What is particularly worrying is that you distinctly remember that you had another pair of cutoffs, similarly embroidered.

With quotations of the sort that someone studying history might have come across and filed as being something she might use in an essay one day.

Some of them were in French. In fact, quite a lot of them were in French.

Oh dear oh dear oh dear oh dear oh dear.