Dearest David,
Last week you turned twenty months old. Last week! Shocking, isn’t it, that I’ve left writing your newsletter this late. I had more pressing things to do… like building brick towers, teaching you to thread beads, drawing, dealing with your demands for more juice (milk!) or another grape… that kind of thing!
We’ve been very sociable this month! We’ve been out and about at a slingmeet and picnics with various cloth-nappy-using people and had a wonderful time. I’m relieved to see that you don’t seem to have inherited my social awkwardness, you’re such a friendly and social little boy, and you make friends so easily. You’re gentle with babies smaller than you (you stroke their hair and say “aaaaah, baby!”) and this has transferred to the way you treat your toys- Tiger now gets carried around wrapped up in a blanket, fed milk, and has his nappy changed regularly. (He fits a medium Itti.)
You’re so bright, David. You can do playtray puzzles in five seconds flat; the shape sorter at incredible speed. You probably use 100+ words now (I can’t keep track, you learn so many every day) and understand everything we say to you. Whether you choose to do as you’re told is another matter, but at least we know that you’re able to understand! You love books- story books, word books, books of facts. You sit with your 100 Words books and name almost everything in them, as if we don’t know what those things are called, and I’m convinced you think we’re stupid.
Your favourite foods this month are grapes and apples and goats’ milk. And nothing else, apart from the occasional sausage. The milk must be served pink (Crusha, not Nesquik, because we don’t like companies who push formula in developing countries), although the tiniest splash of it will do- I’m sure you can’t taste it and it’s just a psychological thing. You also love ice cream, although you’re not allowed to have it any more- cows’ milk is causing you so many problems and I think it’s time for us to push for a dietician’s referral. You seem to have cottoned onto the whole cows’ milk= tummyache thing and won’t eat cheese on its’ own any more, you clever thing. Also? You are never eating Skittles again. That was an interesting sugar high.
You can climb and run and jump like a pro now. You’ve even managed to master the big climbing frame with the slide on at the park and frighten the life out of Grandma and Auntie Hester! You are utterly fearless. You love to tip cold water over yourself (and Daddy) in the bath, and I’m sure you’d do it to me if I let you play with the tap.
Your hair is getting really rather long. You hate having it washed, but that might have something to do with your mean mother accidentally washing it with tea tree shampoo and then getting it in your eyes. Still, I won’t cut it, I won’t bow to pressure to “just run the clippers through it”, because it doesn’t get in your way and I love it. So there.
It’s time for me to wind up, because it’s late and I have work to do. I love you, smellybum, and please stop this growing up thing, alright?
Love,
Mummy (and Daddy who’ll cry when he reads this, as usual)
Here’s my entry for Tara’s Gallery this week. Apologies for spelling and grammar, I finished writing at 1am.
Before David was born, I was determined that, whether I had a boy or a girl, they would play only with gender-neutral toys, wear any colour of the rainbow they fancied, have their hair however short or long was practical. Any baby boy I had would definitely play with dolls, and equally, any girl I had would play with cars. As a child I rarely played with dolls (I much preferred animals!) and when given the choice of a Barbie or Hot Wheels Happy Meal on one of those very occasional trips to McDonalds, it was the Hot Wheels car every time.
Reality hit on the 23rd December 2008, when David Charles made his way into the world. The midwives in hospital commented on how he slept like a teenage boy (he was incredibly difficult to wake to feed) and was a lazy breastfeeder, which apparently is typical with boys. Almost every item of clothing we’d been given was blue, and hell, I was too sleep deprived to argue.
He was ridiculously early with his physical development, and the most chilled-out baby you could ever meet. He was also a good sleeper, a good eater, and just a joy in general: all things that I’ve been told are “typical” of baby boys. He wore blue, people bought him boys’ toys, and I didn’t argue: we just went with the flow.
Now, as a toddler, he might have a fetching purple nappy in his collection of fluff, he has clothes in all the colours of the rainbow (thank you, H&M!), and he is starting to grow a mullet, but does he play with dolls? Ha, ha, ha.
He is obsessed with anything with wheels, or a motor, or a horn, and he shuns activities like drawing in favour of cars, cars, and more cars. It doesn’t matter whether the cars are his toys on his garage, or Daddy’s Triumph Herald, or my Seicento, it’s “car, car, CAR!!!!!!” almost constantly. He calls his buggy his car, and would spend hours playing with its wheels. He points out cars and buses and fire engines when we’re out and about, and a police car with blues and twos going is the MOST EXCITING THING IN THE WORLD EVER.
This may, of course, just be because his parents are both car people. Chances are, it probably is. His other obsessions are washing machines and hoovers, although I reckon it’s probably just because of the noise they make and the great ride-on potential of our hoover.
Still, I can’t help feeling that we’ve encouraged him towards gender-neutral toys only to turn around and find that he is a Boy with a capital B, and there’s absolutely nothing we can do about it.
And, anyway, a boy and his daddy and a toy fire engine are incredibly sweet.
As is a small boy sprawled out on the sofa playing with his cars:
This portrait hangs above my bed.
It’s funny, I take portraits for a living, and yet I can’t capture anybody in the same way I capture David. I have so many photos of him running and smiling and pulling funny faces, but this is the one I feel truly shows him the way he is, or, at least, the way he was at that moment in time.
I don’t have a good memory. I remember details, dates, times, little things, but I have to keep notes. David changes so rapidly that I need to keep taking these, need to keep track. Or else, it’s gone, and I can’t get it back.
And I want it back so much.