Wednesday, July 7, 2010

When Daddy Gets Home

He is greeted with a small assortment of random items underneath the cat flap at the foot of the back door.

This is LittleChap's new hobby. It started off innocently, the cats would walk through the kitchen trying to avoid his grabby little mitts ( him ignoring our mantra of 'soft touch, soft touch'). They would eventually escape through their personal door and LittleChap would sit opening and closing the flap, looking to see where they had gone. Now he hoovers up all odd items left around our house, goes toddling over to the 'flap, and pushes them though to the outside.

This eclectic collection of items has included books, clean washing, food (complete and half chewed), bottle tops, saucepan lids... simply anything LittleChap can gets his hands on.

This hobby does indicate our laziness in throwing things away. Yesterday I was greeted by a range of empty shampoo and shower gels that have built up at the bottom of the shower. It made me smile to think of LittleChap pottering between the shower room and the cat flap, intent on his task in hand. He also does this cute straight arm swinging thing every time he posts something- seemingly so proud of his achievement.

Tonight, I came in through the back gate, wheeled my bike into the garden and caught him in the act. A little hand was sticking out holding onto some house keys The pile outside was relatively small. I crouched down, took hold of the keys and pulled them through. The flap then flipped open and LittleChap's face appeared, realising Daddy was the other side a beaming smile came across his face. Followed by the realisation that the posting game had taken a new twist, if someone is the other side of the flap then they can keep posting the same thing back and forth indefinitely, what fun!

Thursday, July 1, 2010

Where for art thou

Where for art thou my beamish boy.

I would like to know why, I expect there may be no answers. What has happened to my smiley littlechap I used to know. There seems to have been a sea change in him and his demeanour.

He has always been wilful, night times were, and still are, a daunting randomness of fitful sleep patterns, with us endlessly rocking, soothing and half awake cooing. This was all easy to bare, because come day time, he was a pleasure. Easy to smile, giggling, content to play or flick through books by himself. Not now.

For the last two weeks he has wailed and moaned, and often it seems for little or no reason. I am knackered, mummylimited even more so.

He has had a cold recently, and mostly shaken that off, I can't be certain, because he has been teething molars for the last week and has had the obligatory runny nose that accompanies it. 'Why didn't you mention that before', some might say, 'there's your reason'. But previously, teething has never changed his whole personality.

Paranoia has not helped (something else no one mentions about parenthood, a constantly massive sense of worry and fear about your child). Last week littlechap had two hefty knocks to his head, just the usual toddler slip ups. Although on that day, at bath time, he was doing this weird shaking thing and his bottom lip was all a quiver- it was possibly something to do with being overheated and then me giving him a tepid bath- but my mind did a little freaked out back flip. He's brain damaged!- my quiet inside voice told me (these irrational fears are best not shared with mummylimited, it only fans the flames of her even more paranoid fears).

Mummylimited and I want our beamish boy back.

Littlechap littlechap, where for art thou my littlechap?