baybeasts

The other night, we were putting the boys to bed as we always do. The routine is much like most other people’s - bath, pyjamas, maybe a story depending on how tired they are, then lights off and feed to sleep as we sing a little song. As I lay there with my eyes closed, enjoying the soft tug of a sleepy feed from Huey, I heard Arlo singing from across the bed: ‘Hey diddi…ga fiddi…cow mooooon…diddi doh laff…run fooon.’ The syllables slowly came together as he repeated them several times, and through my stupor I realised that he was singing Hey Diddle Diddle. How odd! Neither bean nor I has ever sung that particular nursery rhyme with him.

In the early years of our relationship, bean and I experimented with various crunchy lifestyle options. We were vegan for three months. It was cheap, delicious, challenging, and we lost 5 kgs which was a good thing, but it was almost impossible to eat out or at friends’ houses and we missed red meat too much. We did yoga. It was relaxing and rewarding but it cost a lot of money and we skipped classes too often. We did a meditation course. It was even more relaxing, challenging, and felt really good when we did it during the classes, but I don’t think either of us meditated independently more than two or three times. We gave away the television. There was more time for doing other stuff, especially reading, but bean stopped talking to me in the evenings because she had her head in a book and I missed her so we got it back again. I don’t know where the anti-television sentiment comes from, but it is strong within me, and despite my own addiction I swore that our kids would not watch any telly until they were at least two years old.

I bet you can guess how that turned out. Pretty much every day one or other of them climbs eagerly on the couch chanting either ‘Be be! Be be!’ in the case of Huey or ‘wach bi pay schhhoool’ in the case of Arlo (I find myself trying to minimise my downfall by telling Arlo he can watch ‘a bit of play school’ and it has become the title of the show). I feel guilty about it, I do. And a friend with older kids recently advised me that it is the beginning of the end. Apparently the rest of my parenting years will be filled with requests for the computer, the telly, the playstation etc etc ad infinitum. Now that’s something to look forward to. I am trying to make my peace with this, arguing to myself that for the meantime Play School is about as harmless as television can be, and it brings them great joy, and nursery rhymes - like Hey Diddle Diddle.

But the other big thing for me in this is that, until now, everything has come from us. These kids have only been cared for by us (apart from the odd hour here and there with friends and family). All their games, their songs, their exclamations - they are all are things that bean and I have said to them or done with them. It rocked me, hearing an unfamiliar song come out of Arlo’s mouth. It is the beginning of the rest of his life, where what he learns from the world will be so much more than what I can give him. But oh, how I hope that what I have given him (my rock’n'roll rendition of Baa Baa Black Sheep, ‘oh no!’ and ‘oh dear’, crazy dancing to african dance music) sticks too. I want to be important in his life. Because he is oh so important in mine.

(note: I’ve already come to terms with Arlo and Huey having thoughts and ideas and desires of their own, oh yessiree, it has been well and truly drummed into me, that one.)

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Some other things that have happened in the last few days that I’ve been meaning to record for posterity (warning, list ahead):

Huey said his first three word sentence: ‘Other shoe off!’ - or if you prefer phonetic spellings, ‘Udder shu offffff!’

Arlo and Huey invented a joint game all by themselves, (that is, no input from us - cool). They had to sit on the step outside, throw a ball from each hand while yelling ‘FROOOOW!!!’ then say ‘oh dear’ as the balls fall on the ground. Then they had to stand up, run and fetch the balls, and do the whole thing all over again.

We haven’t been actively teaching Arlo and Huey ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ (though bean’s mum taught them please, so they thought ‘up’ was actually pronounced ‘up-be!’). At this stage we think it’s enough to simply model good manners - we’ll talk to them about it more explicitly when they’ve got a bit of empathy (a while off yet). But tonight I was absolutely thrilled when Arlo spontaneously said ‘thank you’ when I handed him a small piece of food that he wanted. Thrilled, I say!

I’ve been trying to get them involved in the gardening a bit more. The other day we planted carrot, beetroot, broad bean, onion and celery seeds, and each day since we have been watering them with the watering can. (Imagine my surprise when I saw that babycakes posted a very similar picture today as well!)