It’s been a week or two since I last posted, I’ll admit. From a day-to-day perspective, not a lot has been happening in all honesty. I’m becoming increasingly disillusioned at work and in all frankness I’ve had enough of the journey. I’ve started looking for something new as it’s making me utterly miserable coming to work every morning. I’m at the point where I would pretty much take anything if it would mean I was closer to home than I am currently.
Last night was a good case in point. W had to stay late at work and she rung me on my train journey home to let me know. I could do nothing in respect of picking up B, meaning she had to stay with the childminder. I see very little of B as it is and this is by no means W’s fault. I feel so frustrated - if I was somehow closer, I could pick her up in the evenings and spend some much-needed time with her. I know W would be much happier with this arrangement too. We both feel really guilty about the lack of time we spend with her and I certainly feel that I am missing out on some important stages in B’s development (more later). To top this all off, I dashed off the train and sprinted to the bus stop (as it leaves almost right on the time my train gets in). The doors of the bus closed as I approached and despite my frantic knocking on the door, the driver decided to ignored me and pulled away – in doing so, exercising the very little power this man has in his life. My head drooped, dejected and miserable.
The weeks really do seem to last forever and the weekend flies by and is over before you’ve even had a chance to appreciate them. More worrying is the fact that, after 5 months in this new job, I’m already beginning to feel like I did on a Sunday when I was at my old place of work after 4-5 years. I was at my last job for 8 years, which just illustrates the poor physical and mental state I was in at the time. I was suffering from depression and had practically no ‘get-up-and-go’. In the end, it took a redundancy to finally get me to move on and then it took me six months to find the job I am in now. I absolutely won’t let a lack of drive stop me from being proactive and finding myself something different this time around.
On the plus side, it looks like W’s contract at work is going to be extended until the end of May, which is fantastic news for her and from a financial perspective for us. Although it is tiring, she loves the job and would love to be able to stay full time. I wholeheartedly support that last statement.
In addition, B’s development seems to be going from strength to strength. I am so proud of her and I pinch myself (figuratively of course – I’m a wuss, it would hurt with the sheer volume of pinching I would have to do) with how amazing she is. Just before I met W, when life wasn’t great and I was at my (un-diagnosed depression) lowest, I didn’t think I would meet a significant other, let alone get married and have children with said person. I doubted I would be any good at Fatherhood so have surprised myself completely. This has not come as much of a surprise to friends and family though and especially W, who always knew I would come up trumps.
I always looked at the phrase ‘to love someone so much it hurts’ with a huge dollop of scepticism, but here I am feeling exactly that way about my wife and child. Which I guess is why it’s so tough being so far away from them both. Anyway, I seem to have drifted somewhat.
B has developed somewhat of a 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 27th gear with regards to crawling. Before, her attitude to crawling was on an ‘only if I have to’ basis and even then it was a commando shuffle rather than a fully-fledged crawl. Now, you can look away for a fraction of a second, look back and find her undoubtedly with her head and hands in something she shouldn’t have. Also, from out of nowhere, she has decided she wants to stand up now and what surprised us both is how quickly she took to it. None, of this ‘attempt it for 3-4 weeks and gradually get better’. B had it licked in the space of a weekend easily and she’s already taking her hands away from what she’s holding on to and hovering for a number of seconds before crashing down to the floor, chuckling about it and setting off again.
As W said, “Dear, we need to get the baby gate up!” We’ve already had to drop the cot as one morning last week, W went in to find her standing up, leaning over the cot and grabbing at pretty much everything on the storage unit next to her. B had a development check last week and everything is fine. She is perhaps a little heavier than she should be, but nothing to worry about. The Health Visitor said that she thinks B will walking within the month – wow!
Movement isn’t the only thing she’s getting better at. Her vocabulary is growing at an astonishing rate. As long as I live I don’t think I’ll ever forget the time when I took her from the living room to the bedroom to play on the bed. She proceeded to chew the frame at the end of the bed (quite a delicacy I’ve heard in Baby circles). We had been playing the “Where’s (name of baby)? There she is!” game for a while, mostly using her blart rag (I’ll explain some other time), our hands or an item of her clothing.
As she was tucking into her second course of bed frame, I said “Where’s B?” However, I never got around to finishing the phrase, she did it for me. sure, it wasn’t as clear and concise as someone older might say, but there was absolutely no mistaking it. My jaw dropped to the floor, for what seemed like an age. I called out to W (who was still in the living room). She heard it too and I imagine she had much the same expression as I did.
This certainly wasn’t the first time B has impressed us and there’s no doubt it will be the last either. There’s no question that she’s smart. I almost wouldn’t be surprised if I came home today to find B doing the housework whilst reciting Shakespeare, bouncing up and down on a space hopper and making the cats levitate. If pride manifested itself as the colour green, I would have people stopping me in the street every five minutes asking me if I was Lou Ferrigno.
So, signing off for now. In conclusion, I quote from the top of this very page, ‘From a day-to-day perspective, not a lot has been happening in all honesty.’ I worry for the data storage capacity of the internet if things get busy for me!
Currently listening to:
Maximo Park: Our Earthly Pleasures
Air: Pocket Symphony
The Delgados: Hate
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