Shopping

“Beside, I am not unkeen on shopping either.”

   The Dinosaur in A Lovely Love Story

At our wedding BWM and I chose The Lovely Love Story by Edward Monkton as our reading. It tells the story of the Dinosaur (boy) meeting The Lovely Other Dinosaur (girl), their love of things (like rugby for the boy) and shopping (for the girl). Toward the end of the story, after showing an initial reticence, The Dinosaur admits to having a soft spot for shopping.

Of course, shopping for The Dinosaur (me) has to be focused and have a clear purpose. Whether it be purchasing food or finding the perfect gift for BWM I’m the man. However, if it comes to wandering the shops looking in windows I’m somewhere else!

In the few months I have been a stay at home dad shopping has taken on new parameters. A friend of mine who had been a stay at home dad with two kids said to me, “Shopping centres are your friend, you can kill half a day there easily.” He gave me a few tips and he has so far been pretty much spot on. I’ve got to know the shopping centres and village shops in my local area quite well. Shopping becomes somewhat like a mathematical equation:

Probably the “Availability of good coffee” is the most important one to me and because of that I usually end up going to Balmain despite the difficulty of finding a free space in a very cramped car park. Otherwise I have to bite the bullet and pay (but only very rarely).

I’ve got other choices too and sometimes when I get there I even manage to score the parents with prams parking spot. I used to think these were just spots closer to the door and yes at some places they are. However, when you find one where the width of the space is bigger it’s like the clouds have parted and an angelic choir is singing as you take your child out of the car. They’re that good I almost think I’m ready to do laps of the car park and stalk people with prams so that I can get that spot!

I guess I’ve covered my food shopping and shopping centre visits. However, H and I recently went into the city to purchase BWM her birthday present. BWM had for her birthday requested a new set of earrings and prior to our city visit I had done some internet research. I finally found what I thought to be the perfect pair of earrings at Tiffanys but I needed to see them first.  Getting into the city was quite an interesting exercise because doing it after peak hour and before sleep time was an exercise in logistics in itself. Having made the decision to drive in and pay the parking H and I made sure we were able to arrive at the shop of choice at its appointed opening at 10am. I even made sure H and I both wore something suitable for going into town, rather than our usual 10am fare.

Going into any shop with a small child can go one of two ways – disaster or awesome. Upon our arrival at the store we went up the lift to the 1^st floor and after being in his stroller for a while H decided he had had enough – he wanted out. I made a decision at that point that I could soon regret; I parked up and let H out for a walk. This was a move fraught with danger as the first shop assistant approached me. H who was beside me didn’t miss a beat; he just looked up and smiled. As the second shop assistant arrived a few seconds after, H’s smile got bigger. By this time I had picked him up and he was turning on the charm, smiling and gabbling as only infants of 13 months can do. It also meant that 4 of the 5 staff that were working on the floor were helping H and I (I’m not sure what the other dozen customers thought of this but H was just being too charming). The earrings were purchased and we received great service and advice in getting BWM her birthday present. With the present brought we were able to get home with the logistics side a raging success as well. 

Of course now that I’ve taken off my Dinosaur who likes to shop hat, I may be wrong about all of this. Perhaps there is a button under the counter, next to the hold up alarm, which says small child on the loose – serve them quickly and get them out by giving them a great park just near the door. If there is I will certainly be trying to find all the shops that have one because it makes me not so unkeen on shopping at all!

Time

 It seems such a long time since I wrote my last blog. I could check and tell you exactly how many days, hours, minutes it has been since I last published something. Or I could instead use the concept of how many teeth have exploded through, how many runny nappies I have changed or how many walking stacks I have witnessed. However you want to measure it I know the time which I have spent since the last blog was written has definitely been busy.

About the time (more time – there’s a specific theme here!) I wrote my last blog one of my teaching colleagues sent me a text and said we should get our boys together for a play while we drink coffee during the holidays. I replied to him “When are holidays? I have no idea anymore.”

When I was teaching I would be able to tell you exactly when holidays were coming up - as could all teachers I’m sure. Some colleagues would even have the days, hours, minutes counting in their heads!

The big thing which made me twig holidays were coming up was the fact that both H and I started to get sick. At the end of a term kids and teachers get sick, both illness wise and also perhaps a little sick of each other! Holidays are therefore, a great opportunity to refresh the body and mind ready for the next school term. What I realised was I wasn’t going to get a holiday after 11 or however many weeks it was to recharge my batteries. This left me feeling jealous of my schoolteacher colleagues for the first time all year. I suppose I felt like many others who see teachers having regular holidays. Yet when I think of all the hard work teachers do during the term I know they fully deserve their holiday break because coming back refreshed helps them be better learners and teachers.

The concept of time that I live with has changed somewhat this year. No longer do I worry so much about how many weeks, days or minutes there are – these arbitrary measurements we have introduced don’t seem as important. Life is measured more now by H and the way that he has grown and changed. In the last few weeks he has had his first couple of cases of a dodgy tummy, his first ear infection and, for want of a better term, an explosion of teeth in his mouth. He has started to walk which means he has started to stack it more as he develops his confidence. He has started to use a spoon and try and eat his own dinner, although the ‘natural spoon’ (his cupped hand) is still his favourite. There are so many things I could measure the growth of my son with outside our normal assumptions of time. These make it so much easier to enjoy the moment and see the change as he grows exponentially between meals and sleeps.

As time passes and my son grows I know I have to enjoy every milestone and not get caught up in the year, month, day, hour, minute or second of when it happened. I’m not going to get the time again to enjoy it as much as I am now so I’ll just have to make the most of it – unless of course I take a crash course in Gallifreyan and become a Time Lord like Dr Who. Then it would be back to the beginning or somewhere in between!

The Nature of Nurture

I’ve said before that I’ve learnt a lot from my son in the time we’ve had together. I’ve learnt to be a better loser and winner because of him (yes, last week my rugby teams only won 1 of the 4 grades – losing 2 after the siren!). However, in watching H grow, learn and change so rapidly I sometimes question what has come naturally and what has been nurtured.

I remember leaving for work one morning (back in the day when work was a paid position with a commute) and I waved to him through the glass door. In return H’s hands went up and down rapidly like a little bird taking off – it was the beginning of learning to wave! Now he loves to wave to people as they arrive and leave, as well as to any large and noisy vehicle! He’s been nurtured in doing this because he watched BWM and myself wave to him and he copied it. We’ve been trying to teach him how to blow a kiss but that’s been completely unsuccessful. In that case we’ll stick to waving for the time being.

On the side of nurture we never taught H to smile or laugh. However, he does it all the time. Of course his first smile when he was very young could be put down to wind. In fact, one of the first laughs I ever remember could be put down to wind too. Sitting in his high chair he broke wind loudly, cracked a small smile and then started to laugh. Now before you think that he’d been copying his Dad I actually wasn’t present at this moment in time. He did this all in front of his Mum because it was at a time when I was still working.

Since he has begun to laugh he loves to join in the joke whenever someone laughs. H is infected by laughter and gets really excited whenever he hears adults or other children laughing. He figures it must be good and consequently uses it as a chance to practice his own laugh. Yesterday when he played with his 12 year old cousin he laughed and laughed simply because his cousin was laughing himself.

Is his smile and laughter natural or nurtured? Or is it perhaps part of the nature of nurture that he sees things and learns them without anyone realising? In the end, he is what he is, and as long as he’s happy then the nature of nurture can come naturally to him.