Hills, Tents, and the Turning of the Year

Autumn arrived on Friday. It was a nice day, and the trees are still green; but there was just something about the angle of the sunlight slanting across the road at 8 in the morning which said to me that the year had turned. Summer has made a couple of late showings since, but it's on the way out.

Squirmle I is now eating raspberries, and we're trying to stay cool about his general faddiness (and aversion to vegetables). Squirmle II is trying to drink Mummy dry. We all had a great day on Bank Holiday Monday, with a picnic on the hills and a shared mint choc chip ice cream.

Our day trip to Greenbelt was also a success, though I think I only got to one complete talk, and spent much of the time chasing the Squirmle. I'm now catching up by listening to MP3s. I have again got the feeling that Greenbelt speaks more directly to me than any other religious gathering in my experience: its openness to discussion of practically any issue, its willingness to accept a huge range of liberal Christian viewpoints (and agnostic and non-Christian viewpoints), and its refreshing debunking of all the kinds of Christianity with which I have little or no sympathy.

Idylls of the Dad

Thursday was marked by one of my best moments since the day we were first sent home with a small pink alien. The weather was my favourite kind: a sunny day with a few clouds in a blue sky, and a decent breeze to make the trees wave and keep the temperature comfortable. I took Squirmle I up to the swings, a walk which started extremely slowly as we ambled along, pushing the empty buggy and inspecting plants, stones, and lamp posts. Eventually he tired of this, and requested a ride. We had an energetic swing in our favoured fashion (with me holding the swing back and counting to the requested number before letting go). As is now usual, this was followed by a short walk through the woods to the railway. As we reached the fence by the track, I noticed some discarded fruit on the ground, and a tree hung with small round yellow things. I thought it might be a crab apple, and sauntered over in case it would be a useful source for jam-making. It turned out to be laden with small yellow plums, just ripening, and twined below with a lethally spiky bramble, also just coming into season. Somewhat to my surprise, the Squirmle (whose unvarying response to raspberries and strawberries is to say "Daddy eat it") consented to accept a proffered blackberry and gingerly nibbled his way through it. He wasn't even perturbed by the deep purple colour of his fingers after this process. I ventured to offer a plum, and he solemnly ate that too, while I munched my way through about four, all the while watching him nervously hoping that he wouldn't swallow the stone. We were greeted by a friendly passing spaniel, whose owner said that he had played there as a boy and was off to look for his former den. And we saw five trains, including a goods train.

Jam and Pyjamas

The garden continues to produce: sour cherry jelly has been followed by blackcurrant jam and gooseberry chutney (to a wartime recipe), and as the loganberries ripen I'm stashing them in the freezer for a future jam-making session. The white agapanthus is starting to open, and some anonymous blue flowers (Brodiaea?) have sprouted in one of the bulb pots.

We're trying not to make too much of it, but we were very pleased by Squirmle 1's success in doing a poo in his potty. He has also helped to make flapjack and produced some enthusiastic paintings. He drives us mad by trying to treat everything as a game in which Mummy and Daddy have to chase him, wielding toothbrush, trousers, shoes, sun-hat, or whatever. Meanwhile Squirmle 2's progress in sleeping has suffered a setback caused by a cold, but he has now learned how to grab things, and can shove himself a fair distance along the carpet by lying on his back and pushing with his legs.

Growing infants and vegetables

Life is too busy to blog now...

The Squirmle had his first Terrible Twos Tantrum as he reached the age of two to the minute! How tragic can it be that Daddy is too busy to lift you into your high chair and Mummmy does it instead? He had (and helped to blow out) a 2-shaped candle on his birthday cake, though no party, as we thought that going to four friends' parties was quite enough excitement for the season. For the last few weeks he has been expanding his repertoire of second syllables and final consonants (now saying "boo-KH" with gusto), so there is some hope that he may be able to communicate outside the home (though he may not wish to: he refused to speak to the staff at nursery when visiting a new room last week). He has also completed his 15-piece Big Bus jigsaw practically on his own, which is pretty impressive. His counting is still enthusiastic, even though there can be few cultures in which the numbering system goes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 14, 14, 14...

Meanwhile Squirmle II has developed a beaming smile which he deploys occasionally after a feed, but is still scarcely capable of sleeping if not actually lying on Mummy or Daddy. He has the endearing habit (apparently not uncommon in breastfed babies) of saving up all his poo for two or three days, and then letting rip with a ghastly burbling sound which registers rather a long way up the Richter scale.

The roses are starting to come out now. 'Kathleen Harrap' has been out for over a week, 'Graham Thomas' has started, the yellow climber on the fence is going fit to bust, and the two red ones will be out soon. The single delphinium has been eaten by slugs, but is making a comeback thanks to the application of some 'eco-friendly' slug pellets. The gooseberry has lost half of its leaves to small green caterpillars, and something is eating the choisyas. We've had our first home-grown salad leaves, and some of the tomato plants may not be dead yet. Living off the land is a long way off, though!

Eastertide: New Life, New Stress

After all my musings on the topic of creation, I was struck afresh by Genesis 1 at the Easter vigil service this year. I heard the tale more clearly than before as a simple expression of faith by the ancient authors. No one this side of insanity could take literally the description of the vault of heaven dividing the waters above from the waters below; but the account stands pure and simple as a statement of spiritual affirmation. Believing that the world had such a form, the authors stated their conviction that God was the source of it; but what they happened to believe about the physical constitution of the world is immaterial to the underlying affirmation.

Despite the incomprehension of our well-meaning but blinkered musicians when anything exotic such as a Taize chant or a responsorial psalm is called for, the service was grounded in reality and quite uplifting, from the bonfire in the churchyard to the generous spraying of the congregation with water from the font. It was also a welcome brief respite from the turmoil of home life, where the active and increasingly self-willed Squirmle 1 is now manifesting his unsettled feelings at the recent arrival of Squirmle 2, and the latter is giving his mother much discomfort and frustration and virtually no sleep. (I can hear him squawking now, at a minute to midnight, and he may not take much of a break before 5 a.m.)

Counting

Counting has now become one of the Squirmle's chief amusements. At least two months ago he was saying "wu'" with enthusiasm on seeing a figure "one", but as he also occasionally said "wu'" for several other numbers we took little notice. However, the continual low-key counting of things, whether on children's TV, in numerous books, or just when out and about, has obviously sunk in, and in the last few weeks he has started recognizing and naming most of the numerals. We now usually count the (14) stairs as we go down them, and he can often be heard chanting wu', two, 'ree, bor, bye, si', eigh', noyn, ten, tweol'. (There seems no particular logic to the persistent absence of 7 and 11.) He does understand the notion of enumeration as well as mere sequence: I offered him one hand to help him down the stairs today, and he held out the other hand and said "two".

The letter O has also been joined by B, K, M, T, et al., and walkign along the street now has to be interrupted so that we can spot the letters on the manhole covers.

Walking Backwards

The latest talent exhibited by the Squirmle is walking backwards, which he demonstrated with some glee on the way to the corner shop the other day. He started out with a few sideways steps (just to make sure nothing dreadful happened), and then went into full reverse gear for several yards. Later, he tried it in the house, but discovered that you can't go very far without receiving a clonk on the back of the head from a door or a piece of furniture.

He has also made his first definite step towards literacy. For months he has been playing with square fridge-magnets bearing coloured letters, but this week he suddenly pointed to the letter 'O' and said "O" quite distinctly. Just to show that this was not a fluke, he then found another 'O' and said "O" for that one too.

Of course, much more exciting for him has been the arrival of snow. We have made lots of footprints, and produced a small snowman on the drive (about a foot high). He even pointed at a residue of bubbles in the bath and said " --'now", so keyed up was he to the observation of piles of white stuff. The snow has also had some less helpful side effects: Thursday's Toddler Group was cancelled, and the day nursery closed at lunchtime on Friday, so a morning spent usefully tidying and cleaning things was succeeded by an afternoon of building piles of blocks and watching a "Clangers" DVD. And then I had to go to work on Saturday to make up the time. Woe!

This and That

Look, I don't do regular updates! I rarely kept a diary up for more than a couple of weeks.

For those who are interested (greetings, weird people!), we had a very enjoyable few days on the island of Jersey, during which I read nothing at all (except the Saturday paper and some tourist leaflets). We will be spending part of next week on a trip to Canterbury Cathedral. The Squirmle has produced his first canine tooth (total count now 13).

I'm sort of following threads on the Christianity group at Library Thing, but my present intellectual/spiritual position is too much in flux for me to add anything to them with any degree of confidence or self-consistency. I have, for the moment, two problems. I have lost confidence in the notion of God as Creator; and I have lost confidence in the moral and spiritual authority of the New Testament. I am therefore going through one of my periodic attempts to see whether a sustainable liberal Christian faith can actually be reconstructed.

The first is prompted partly by some kind of psychic seepage from reading or hearing about the religious views of some of my personal heroes and luminaries, such as Ralph Vaughan Williams and David Attenborough. Also by watching Richard Dawkins on TV. Dawkins is supremely annoying in his insistence on engaging almost entirely with the lunatic end of contemporary Christianity, which obliges me to keep agreeing with him while saying "yes, but...". On the other hand, I do wonder whether my own position (a kind of loose evolutionary theism) is ultimately tenable. In discussion with my other half a couple of weeks ago, I found myself adumbrating Deism.

If God really were an Intelligent Designer, then so much of the design is morally repugnant that theodicy would become a problem. (To paraphrase Attenborough, why believe in a God who designs worms that live in children's eyeballs?) Perhaps I must put to myself the argument I have put to others: God cannot do something categorically impossible, and if creating a Nice universe with free creatures is categorically impossible, then he couldn't have done it any other way. But if God is not able or willing to intervene in evolution (any more than in natural disasters), then what is his contribution to creation? If he is merely a First Cause and Ground of Being, then it is hard to see how a created universe might differ from an uncreated one. The notion of a Creator then becomes entirely a matter of faith based on tradition: there simply is nothing in the universe to stand as evidence one way or the other. "God does not reveal himself in the world." My loss of confidence in the Creator is, perhaps, a result of so much recent exposure to Creationism, and my deeply felt rejection of it. Without the bedrock of irrational commitment to authority, it is hard to maintain grip on a liberal faith.

As for the New Testament: just as the realization that evolution is a fact undermines a traditional view of the Old Testament, the realization that homosexuality is a fact undermines a traditional view of the New Testament. Trying to retain Jesus while regurgitating Paul is hardly a new conundrum, but it is one which I am addressing anew.

If neither Creation nor Scripture can offer a reliable support for religious faith, then one has only the exercise of religion itself. I realize that I once summed up faith just so, about 20 years ago, as "the practice of prayer and virtue". But to engage with a non-interventionist God requires commitment to the kind of non-conceptual and contemplative prayer in which I have so often tried and failed. Perhaps I must make another effort towards Zen, which I once described as offering "a way of praying on those days when I don't believe in God". What, though, to do while attending public worship (irritating, distracting, boring)? As a householder (grihastha), I am no longer a free agent, able to wander at will between Solemn High Mass and the Friends' Meeting for Worship.

Adventurous Challenge Met

Taking the children swimming is no doubt viewed by many parents as a fairly routine thing. For me, however, it was a bit of an adventure, as I have never done it on my own before, and the Squirmle hasn't been in a pool for nearly a year, which for him is two-thirds of a lifetime. We were going to go with his friend Paul, but Paul has a cold. I compounded the challenge by deciding to put my Green hat on and take the Squirmle and his buggy on the bus, which is also something I have not done before.

I am pleased to report an almost unqualified success. A bit of a wait for the bus, which became unexpectedly busy (another buggy, and hordes of pensioners), but the infant fell asleep early in the journey, which helped, especially as it also enabled me to check out without interruption all those hateful details (where are the lockers? how do you get into them? where are the loos? ditto? etc.).

The Squirmle was overwhelmed by the pool at first - mainly, I think, by the noise and the number of people - and he clutched me and whimpered for the first ten minutes or so. Then he realized that all those other children were actually laughing and enjoying themselves, and that sploshing gently up and down in the water was not unpleasant. Pretty soon he had remembered how to smile and kick feebly while being floated around on his tummy, so we had a good 20 minutes before his teeth started to chatter. Memo to self: take a bigger bag - one that will carry not only all the towels, changing stuff, snacks, etc., but also all the clothes that both of you are wearing, including shoes and coats! No hot snacks at the leisure centre this morning, but we found our way to the Cathedral coffee shop and shared a jacket potato with baked beans.

Got back at 2 o'clock, and he's still asleep two hours later! Result! For making an acquaintance with water, it was a lot more hassle for me than letting him pour muddy water over himself out of a flowerpot on the patio (which was yesterday's amusement), but involves less laundry.

Further Steps

Further steps have been taken by the Squirmle: he is now capable of walking the length of the kitchen by himself. He is also capable of climbing up the stairs (though not down). I discovered this a couple of weeks ago. Having nipped upstairs for something, I watched from the top as he boldly set out from the bottom. I knew he could manage a couple of steps, but he was two thirds of the way up before he stopped and looked up to grin. His next move, I suspected, would be to stand up, and then sit down in mid air. Hoping to avert this catastrophe, I stretched down and took his hand. I then had to keep hold of him while getting down below him, which meant worming down the stairs on my stomach and then turning round, an exercise both inelegant and uncomfortable. He is now barred from the front hall by a gate in the kitchen doorway and a closed door to the living room.

Busy, busy, busy

Too busy to blog for a while, mainly because of trying to do some DIY and sort out a lot of workmen. Had to clear much of a house, which involved about half a dozen trips to the dump in the trusty Morris Traveller.

We spent a week in Bunessan on the Isle of Mull, and had a mainly excellent holiday. The Squirmle did throw up on the Iona ferry, while I was carrying him in a backpack, so that caused a bit of fuss as both of us needed wiping down when we got there. Still made it to the morning service at the Abbey, though. The Squirmle rapidly discovered that abbeys have great acoustics, so I walked around the cloister while K stayed in the service. He passed through a brief period of heptodonty during the week, and finished up a fully toothed octodont.

Upstanding citizen

Standing up has become the Squirmle's favourite amusement. He has now graduated to scaling the sheer sides of pieces of furniture, including the coffee table and the fridge. He can also walk practically the full length of the kitchen when held up by both hands. The vinyl is rather slippery, but his habit of removing his socks at almost every opportunity makes progress possible.

For the first time, he has shown interest in his "Baby Einstein" video. To prevent him from standing up two inches from the screen and trying to touch the pictures, I have wedged a baby walker in front of the TV, so he can stand and watch at a more reasonable distance. (I still don't see the point of much of the video: why, when a voice is heard counting to twenty in some language or other, do we see a hand slowly moving four or five objects?)

We went in the garden this week, as the weather was (at last) just warm enough. When first placed on the lawn several weeks ago, he screamed, apparently at the unfamiliar cold green furry surface: this time, exploring from the safety of the picnic rug, he seemed unconcerned.

Onwards to Summer, Backwards to Winter

Exmoor in April can be a welcoming place, if the sun shines. Last week, fortunately, it did. We raided the bookshop at Dulverton (mostly for Buchan), walked (briefly) on Dunster Beach, and took a more extended walk through the fields and woods between the ancient clapperbridge at Tarr Steps and the pretty hamlet of Hawkridge. This was the first major outing for the Squirmle in his backpack, an unwieldy rucksack-like frame giving him a splendid vantage point from which to pull his parent's hair, or to challenge his bearer's equilibrium by writhing uncontrollably with delight at the approach of a dog.

My cottage pie was a success, though I had not planned to make so much that it could provide meals for five more people when reheated! So thanks to Delia, even if she has since betrayed us by failing to support cruelty-free poultry farming.

I thought I had better take Lorna Doone as my holiday reading, since I have never read it and it is set in Exmoor. I have not yet got halfway through it: the sheer amount of verbiage is stunning, and I am not surprised that publishers have sought to abridge the book. Almost a whole page simply details the effect of the east wind on a fruit tree in the garden!

Our return home was marked with a fall of snow, which produced a winter wonderland on Sunday morning. Having at last planted my much-anticipated quince tree less than a fortnight ago, I thought that I had better tap it gently to reduce the amount of snow on its freshly opening leaf-buds.

Progress Report

The hexodont has now learned to clap hands, and to heave himself into a standing position while clutching someone's leg or the bars of his den. He has not yet learned that it would be nicer/wiser to eat everything that is presented to him, rather than distractedly catapulting it on to the kitchen floor, but we persevere.

I have now finished reading Diane Duane's Wizardry trilogy [*see comments], and thought it rather good. In fact, it was so enjoyable and thought-provoking that it made some of the Diana Wynne Jones I have also read recently seem a bit trivial. I'm not sure I shall seek to acquire any more of Duane's books, as reading some more Madeleine L'Engle and Russell Hoban is a higher priority (so many authors, so little time...), but I'm very glad to have tried these.

But as next week's family gathering is in Exmoor, I feel I ought to take Lorna Doone as my holiday reading.

Return of the Bug

Not since I got food poisoning from the canapes at an office reception have I had such a violent disturbance of the gut as the Squirmle's bug gave me last night: at least it was a short, sharp shock. Between 8 p.m. and midnight I made 6 visits as my lower intestine expelled its contents wetly, then at 1.30 a.m., after visit no. 7, I had a stupendous chunder, and in a few moments felt much better. I know: you really didn't need to know that, but I just had to mark the occasion for posterity.

A friend consoles me with the thought that, once your immune system has been hardened up by all the nursery bugs, you may hope for a couple of illness-free years before school starts the process again.

Bugs, books, and babies

Recovering from the last bug brought home by the Squirmle, we are now confronted with the prospect of another. He deposited a deeply-coloured blueberry residue across his cot at some point last night. Hoping that this was an isolated and cough-related incident, we packed him off to nursery, but they phoned late in the morning to say that he had been sick, and brought up his entire breakfast. Oh joy! We shall have to treat him as infectious for at least 24 hours, which means no Toddlers Club tomorrow.

Our ranking in the LT Largest Libraries Zeitgeist has slipped from peak position of No. 353, as other users have been beavering away. The list of similar libraries has been curiously fluid, presumably because adding even a dozen books subtly changes the statistics.

Recuperation

Only after the doctor gave him antibiotics did the Squirmle show real signs of being ill: by the Thursday his temperature had reached over 100. Fortunately by Monday lunchtime he was back to normal, so I could take him to nursery and then crash out myself to try and fight off whatever he had passed on to me.

However, last Friday I woke early in the morning with a dull ache in both hands, reaching halfway up the forearm, and found that my fingers didn't work properly. I had no strength in my grip, and any attempt to lift or pull anything caused pain in the fingers and forearm. Pouring the tea took two hands, and I had to find a new way of holding my spray deodorant. Amid mutterings about "carpal tunnel syndrome" (which it certainly wasn't), I contacted the doctor. It may just have been a side effect of the viral infection, but it was worrying, since it made actions like picking up the baby and changing his nappy both extremely difficult and acutely painful. I was relieved that by today it had subsided to a vague tiredness of the muscles. Actually, the bit that made me feel the worst was the blood test ordered by the doctor. I've always felt faint after blood donation (had to give it up), but I discovered that having even a small amount of blood removed left me faint, nauseated, and deeply unhappy. I had to lie down for five minutes while the Squirmle wriggled in his buggy.

Restless nights

Teething and a cold are being blamed for the Squirmle's restlessness, which got me out of bed at least four times last night. Also, he is developing the habit of rocking on hands and knees in the cot, which I did a lot as a child. Tomorrow we see the doctor about eczema ointment, so maybe she can help with the snufflebug as well.

The LibraryThing catalogue has now hit the children's books. No hiding place. Must read some of them!

Dracula

The second tooth (lower incisor) duly made its appearance just before Christmas, followed, unexpectedly, by one of the upper second incisors. The one on the other side looks set to arrive too, so the Squirmle is going to look like a little vampire for New Year.

Finally finished The Fionavar Tapestry: definitely a good read. I don't get much time for LibraryThing now, but I'm plugging doggedly through the fairytale shelf (aka [N3e]). Our position peaked at No. 383, but it will take a mammoth effort to get back up there.

Squirming along

Crawling backwards a few inches at a time seems to be the peak of the Squirmle's locomotory skills at present, though he can also roll over and over at surprising speed. That second tooth still hasn't showed up.

Note to self: never take an infant on the Bakerloo line at rush hour...

No. 388 (3,150)!