Relaxed Parents

A quick progress report:

• Smiling – happening all the time now, especially when her big brother first comes into the room in the morning.  It’s not physiologically likely but she seems to identify that there’s something quite different about him compared to the Milk Machine (dudelet’s brutally reductive terminology – thankfully, it hasn’t stuck) or the anonymous lumbering Junior Milk Machine Attendant (that would be me).
• Crying – loud, expressive.  I’m not saying we understand her but it feels like we’re better at guessing second time around.  There’s definitely the ‘hungry’ cry (WAH! WAH! WAH! WAH!), the “I’m bored of this view” cry (”GrahgurdlesnurgleGRAHGRAWAHHHHHH!!!!!!”) and the “Change my nappy cry” (a kind of more regularly structured version of the “I’m bored” cry).  The overtired cry is (of course) a complete meltdown that reduces one to jelly.
• Breaking wind – sorry, but I’ve never encountered something so small that could break wind at such extraordinary volume.  Thankfully, she hasn’t done it in public yet because no-one, no-one would believe that such cacophonous detonation could emerge from a small, cuddly baby.  With a pink hat.  Which brings us to…
• Pink – we’re resigned.  Either we throw away all the beautiful things people have given us or we embrace the pink.  Brownie points for the colleague who presented us with a little fawn coat and to my cousin for the brown dress, though.
• Smiling – so much fun, I had to mention it twice.
• Feeding – her favourite thing in the whole world next to…
• Sleeping – except between 5 am  and 7 am when she seems to be at her most alert.  I’m sure she finds that very amusing.
• Kicking her legs and waving her arms – this is an entire language.
• Looking – especially at lightbulbs.  And anything resembling a face.
• Listening – drums are good (she really seemed to like a particularly intense Boredoms workout when she was three weeks old) but this morning, we actually had to leave the hairdryer on because she cried every time that supermum turned it off.  Perhaps she’s a born Merzbow fan.

Poor dudelet, though – there are many advantages to being the first born (unless you’re living in first century Palestine) but you have to go through the trial of being the brunt of your parents’ clumsy ‘trial and error’ attempts to work out what exactly this thing called a baby is and how to operate it.  I’m not saying we’re experts by any means but I look back at what he had to go through and I cringe.