The sixth sense

This morning Zac, sweet angel that he isn't, woke up at 4.15.

The reason? His cot toy batteries had run out. This is the machine which plays lullabies and projects soothing images onto his ceiling whenever he cries or presses a button. The same device which he has been actively telling me to leave switched off for the past month, but which Heather put on last night. The same infernal contraption that requires me – bleary-eyed and three-quarters asleep – to unclip it from his bed rails, unscrew the battery compartment cover with my thumbnail, go downstairs to find four replacement batteries, and then reassemble and reattach the whole thing while, in the meantime, my two-year old boy watches on, repeating "Daddy. Toy not working. Fix it, please" ad infinitum.

Yes, that toy.

Of course, by the time I finish the job, the damage is done and Zac is wide awake. Worse still, he won’t let me leave without crying. Not wanting to wake either Heather or Toby up, I stay. At such times, I can normally fob him off with my iPhone and leave him to watch music videos or Angelina Ballerina quietly while I sleep on his floor. But not today. Oh no. Today he wants to play. Thanks for that, kiddo. It’s not like I have an early morning meeting with our MD that I quite fancied being awake for, is it?

How do they know these things? Is it some kind of sixth sense? After all, it’s not the first time this sort of thing has happened. You can pretty much guarantee that on the day you are running 20 minutes late for an appointment he will turn round to you with a furrowed brow and say, “Isaac’s done a poo.” Or that he will unerringly do the one thing you absolutely do not want him to do at the precise moment you are distracted by something else.

I am deeply suspicious, and deeply disappointed that he hasn’t turned this talent into something more productive, like picking lottery numbers.

Okay. Rant over.

No longer a mummy's boy

For a child who, before his brother's birth, was the world's biggest mummy's boy, Zac has transformed over the last three months.

Ever since he was first able to state a preference, he has always chosen his mother for just about any activity you could care to mention: feeding, play-time, doing the nursery run - all of these were very much mummy first, with daddy a poor substitute. It's hardly surprising, given that he was breast-fed for his first nine months and indeed spent most of that period with his mother pretty much 24/7, but even so the preference has been very marked.

That's not to say I didn't spend any quality time with him - reading and bed-time, in particular - but until Toby's arrival there was always a clear pecking order, and I sat some way down it. Even so, I have always enjoyed what time I had with him without any resentment on my part.

But since Toby was born things have been much more equitable. Zac has been brilliant at accepting that he can no longer monopolise his mother's time, even to the extent of being genuinely helpful and caring around his brother. And as part of that he has started to embrace me wholeheartedly, rather than 'settling' for daddy. I now do the vast majority of his bed-times (while Heather is putting Toby down), we spend more time playing together, and he is now positively enthusiastic about climbing into my car, whether it is for one of our Sunday morning outings or just to go to nursery.

Perhaps the ultimate endorsement of my new-found status is the fact that, when he wakes up in the morning (typically around 5.30), he will always call specifically for "Daddy!" and greet me with a beaming smile and a cheery "Good morning" when I go to him.

That alone means the world to me. But then it's always the little things that make the biggest difference, isn't it?

Ps and Qs

I have developed a whole new vocabulary over the past couple of years since Isaac was born. Drat, Poppycock. Darnation. Fiddlesticks. You know the sort of thing: those child-friendly words or phrases which replace a tiny but not infrequently used subset of the English language which is best kept away from young but sponge-like minds.

It goes hand-in-hand with drilling all those other basic rules of etiquette into our children, which are frequently referred to as 'minding your Ps and Qs'.

(Incidentally, there is much dispute over the etymology of this particular phrase, with possible explanations ranging from the prosaic - children's pronunciations of "please" and "thank you" or "excuse me" - to the more obscure (for instance, a reminder to innkeepers to keep a tally of the pints and quarts their patrons consumed, or mistakenly transposing lower case p's and q's when typesetting on printing presses). Well, I find it interesting, anyway.)

What's been particularly fascinating - and funny - is to watch the take-up and correct contextual usage of such phrases by Zac as his command of the spoken word increases. Since shortly after Christmas, he has been regularly saying "Oh my God!" - accompanied by the requisite cartoonish inflection and wide-eyed expression - in perfect mimicry of his grandma. This has been followed in recent weeks by the gradual introduction of a number of old-fashioned colloquialisms such  as "Golly gosh!" and "Goodness gracious me!", all of which generate a level of amusement in any adult within earshot that encourages their repeated use.

I dread the day - which I know must inevitably come - when he turns round to us and uses a four-letter word for the first time. It will probably happen far sooner than we would hope for, and it will be one of those milestones which mark the end of innocence on his rapidly accelerating journey into adulthood.

I want my son to grow up in so many ways. This isn't one of them.

Mother's Day without mummy

For reasons too convoluted to go into here, Heather and I had to rejig our Mother's Day plans and spend yesterday 100 miles apart with our respective mothers - she with Toby, me with Zac.

I've had Zac on my own for the day plenty of times in the past, but we'd never previously strayed too far away from home; we have always stayed fairly local and not spent more than a couple of hours away. So this was the first time in his two-and-a-quarter years that we had done a 'proper' day out with just the two of us. (Is it unusual that we hadn't previously done big father/son trips? I don't know.)

I was quite excited. Petrified too. Zac has always been (a) a handful and (b) a real mummy's boy, so even the prospect of bundling him into the car and hitting the motorway had me a bit concerned. Not least because all four of us had taken the train into Reading on Saturday, and Zac had thrown a couple of lie-down-on-the-floor-and-cry tantrums. (I had refused to allow him to go up and down in the lift after about 20 consecutive rides.)

With the benefit of hindsight, I don't know why I was so worried. After all, it's not as if I haven't developed an array of coping strategies to deal with all his little tricks. And we were going to see grandma and grandpa, a prospect which had him jumping up and down in excitement. So, having spent most of the previous 24 hours warning him that today it would be just him and daddy because mummy had to go somewhere else for the day, Zac hopped into his car seat with a smile and we drove off chatting, with the only rebuke from the back coming when I wasn't playing the right song on the stereo. He even fell asleep halfway there. Perfect.

It's just over an hour's drive to my parents' house, so the nap he had was perfect for recharging his batteries. When we arrived and he saw his grandparents at the front door waving to him, he was straight in there, immediately homing in on grandpa's laptop and commandeering it.

Providing IT support for grandpa

From there, we all set off along with Uncle Pete for a slap-up Chinese lunch, where Zac amazed us all by picking up a piece of dim sum unaided with his chopsticks and generally eating like a proper grown-up boy. (Okay, he never managed it again, but even so, seriously impressive.)

Chopsticks? Easy peasy!

A bit of after-lunch shopping was followed by a good afternoon nap in the car, some playing in the garden, and then the drive home, which we spent most of singing Lily Allen and Rihanna songs together. (Yes, I know they're not the most child-friendly of songs. You try telling him.)

Throughout the day, Zac had been all beaming smiles and showing off for the family. Where he usually fidgets and moans through meals, he was all patience and cute curiosity at lunch. And though there was a bit of need-a-nap restlessness while shopping, it was nothing like what we had had to negotiate the previous day in Reading.

Basically, we both had a great day. It was the best one I've had with Zac in ages, maybe the best ever. I can't wait for the next one; for sure, I will be planning something a bit more ambitious than usual for him. Who needs mummy, eh? (Famous last words ...)

Counting sheep

If there's one thing I would change about the way we looked after Zac in his first few months, it would be the way we dealt with his sleeping (or, to be more precise, the lack of it).

In some respects, our older boy is very good. With the exception of a couple of short phases, he has generally been very good about getting down to sleep consistently and easily between 7 and 7.30 every evening. We have also discovered that he generally blocks out the sound of Toby's crying completely (a useful skill he inherited from his father).

It's everything else that's the problem.

Even though he has a lunchtime nap on a mat at nursery, we have never been able to get him to sleep in his cot/bed at home during the day; it has always required a stroll in the pushchair or a drive in the car. (Consequently, he was particularly horrendous when we were cooped up indoors and unable to go out during the recent heavy snows.)

And he has always been an early riser. Thankfully, he grew out of his phase of being up by (at the latest) 4.30am, but even now we consider it a lie-in if he manages the right side of 6.00 - most mornings he is up and turbo-charged by 5.30. The only times he has ever made it beyond 6.45 have been when he is ill.

Naturally, two years of this this has taken its toll. Despite sharing the early morning workload, Zac has two parents who are constantly in need of another hour or two's sleep. And obviously things are trickier with Toby, at seven weeks, yet to settle into a proper routine and requiring feeding typically 3-4 times a night.

To be honest, I get by far the easier half of this gig. Heather goes to sleep early most evenings, leaving me to potter around and come to bed in my own time (which, admittedly, is rarely past 10.30). While Heather is still exclusively breast-feeding, I have the luxury of sleeping through - thankfully, as alluded to above, I am a sound sleeper, so my nights aren't excessively disrupted. And while I do my fair share of early mornings with Zac, I find it much easier to grab forty winks here and there during the day (which Heather finds very difficult to do).

Anyhow, in my roundabout way, what I'm saying is that Zac's anti-social sleeping habits probably have at least as much to do with nurture as they do with nature. In other words: odds are it's our fault.

I think we've learned our lesson this time round with Toby. When he is tired he will often howl after we have put him down in his basket; his brother was the same. But whereas with Zac one of us would have caved in after a minute or two and picked him up, now we are getting used to leaving him for a bit longer to see what happens. (I find this much easier to do than Heather - but then, as a dad, I don't have every hormone in my body screaming at me to do something.) More often than not, he soon falls asleep.

Already Toby is showing signs of being a better sleeper than Zac, who at the same age needed to be carried and cuddled for long spells before he could sleep. Maybe what we're doing differently second time around is making the difference; maybe it's having no effect at all. The acid test will come once we start settling him into a routine: we'll see if he can sleep in his own cot during the day without having to go through the whole going-out rigmarole. Whatever happens, at least we're feeling much better and more in control of matters than we ever did with Zac, and that alone is a good thing.

Now if only we could persuade Toby to feed less often during the night. Oh well, one challenge at a time ...

Rules for dads

In my previous post, I outlined five basic rules of parenthood. In general, though, it's not so much parents as fathers who need the most help when it comes to this parenting lark. So here are ten additional rules that all dads should take heed of.

(A health warning: tongue is inserted firmly in cheek here, but many fellow fathers will recognise a grain of truth in most of the following situations.)

Rule #1: If you're not doing something, you should be. You may not know what it is, but there is definitely something. (It will be written on a list somewhere, even if it's one that only exists in your wife's/partner's head.)

Rule #2: Watching The Gadget Show or playing Call Of Duty while occasionally talking to your child does not qualify as 'quality father/son (or daughter) time', no matter how interested they are in what you're doing.

Rule #3: Even if you are the sole bread-winner, change every nappy and are the CEO of a multinational industrial conglomerate, as a father you are the least important person in the household (and that includes any and all pets). Deal with it.

Rule #4: You will lose every argument with your children. If you're already in a long-term relationship, you should be used to that by now, though. (Zac's current ace-in-the-hole is to fire up the death stare and ask "Why not?" with utter conviction when told he can't do something. It's really quite disarming.)

Rule #5: The slightest whiff of criticism of your partner's abilities as a mother is a straight red card offence. However, expect to be told on a daily basis about all the things that you do, don't do, should do more/less of or just plain do wrong. It's a mother's God-given right. Grin and bear it.

Rule #6: Under no circumstances - irrespective of how many times your sleep was interrupted during the night or what time your children dragged you out of bed in the morning - ever mention to your wife how tired you are. Unless your ears need clearing out, that is.

Rule #7: When your other half gets all teary-eyed and emotional because they've had only three hours' sleep for the fourth night in a row and have just had to deal with a poo-up-the-back incident, the only correct response is to be understanding and supportive. However, if you go all emo, you are being a drama queen. Man up and crack open a beer like any self-respecting, emotionally-stunted male should.

Rule #8: Whatever you most want your child to be is the thing they will be least inclined to do. (For instance, I want Zac to be as interested in sports as his parents are, but the moment I put the football on he runs over to the TV, switches it off and goes back to his macramé. Okay, I'm exaggerating. But only slightly.)

Rule #9: If, like me, you delivered your own baby BBA (Born Before Arrival of midwife/ambulance/other person who has some vague idea what they should be doing), this automatically confers a degree of coolness upon you as a father, no matter how uncool you really are. Dine out on it while you can. The effect wears off as quickly as your holiday tan.

Rule #10: The 'illusion of free will' is a reality. There is no such thing as a free lunch. Or a free evening out with the lads. Or a free round of golf. Everything comes with a price tag. It's just that you can't always see it.

The formula to calculate 'free' time (where 'free' means time for which there is not some quid pro quo child/mother-related action required in return) is as follows:

Free time (in hours) = 0

Think about it. For every boys' night out there is an agreement (either explicit or implicit) to babysit for a girly shopping trip. Your Sunday round of golf is worth its weight in chocolate. Even that new Wii controller will be offset by an afternoon pushing the pram around Mothercare. It may not always be obvious, but like taxes you will end up paying somehow some day.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go. I'm pretty sure I'm contravening rules 1, 2 and 10, and I'm heading for another slap-down from rule 4.

Welcome to me & my blog

Hi there. I’m Tim, I’m 39, and I'm a father of two and serial blogger. 

While writing a series of posts for my personal blog recently it occurred to me that, while there are plenty of books, blogs and websites catering to mums, there is precious little for dads.

So here I am, and here is my blog about the manifold joys and occasional frustrations of fatherhood. I'm hoping this will turn out to be in equal parts serious and light-hearted, and serve as a personal journal, a forum to share my experiences and the lessons I have learned (often the hard way), and somewhere I can blow off steam on those occasions when things aren't going so well.

If you're a fellow father reading this: welcome, and I would greatly value your feedback about anything and everything. If you're the wife/partner of a fellow father, you are equally welcome to read, share and comment; hopefully you'll glean some small insights into what it's like to be on the other side of the fence. If you don't have kids: seriously, why are you still here?!?

Anyway, to kick off, here's a little bit about me so you know where I'm coming from.

As I said up top, I'm Tim and I'm 39. I live in Thatcham near Newbury. And I've been married to Heather for 12 years and now have two sons, Isaac (Zac) and Tobias (Toby), who are two-and-a-quarter years and six weeks old respectively.

There’s nothing particularly out of the ordinary or exciting about me, but I like to think I'm a pretty diverse kind of guy.

Why?

Well, for starters, I like to think of myself as multi-cultural. I was born in London and consider myself unwaveringly British (hey, it’s what my passport says I am), but my parents are both Malaysian Chinese, so although I sound like your average middle-class Londoner - whatever that is these days – I don’t look it. Heather’s half-British (mum) and half-Australian (dad), and I think it’s fair to say we’re both keen that our boys grow up with a full appreciation of their diverse origins.

What else? Having (barely) completed a chemistry degree, I haven’t seen the inside of a laboratory since - no great loss on either my part or the scientific world’s - and have worked in marketing ever since. I’m currently employed by a large American multinational manufacturer, having previously worked for, among others, a large British media corporation, a very large retailer and the same public sector business as Postman Pat.

Let’s just say I’ve built a rich portfolio of experiences. It sounds better than “never really had a career plan”, doesn’t it?

The same goes for my interests: I like variety. I’ve been fortunate enough to travel to 20-something countries, and I love discovering different cultures. I follow many sports but football is my first passion (specifically Arsenal), and although I like rugby I much prefer American football and Aussie Rules. I like photography; I like to read; I like to write (hence this blog).

Anyway, that’s me in 300 or so words. And this is my blog. Hope to see you around.