David's
Mental Meanderings 25th January 2003 Twelve
months ago right now I was recovering from 52 hours of labour and a c-section.
Not mine, of course. Certainly Mrs Holford had more from which to recover, but
I was exhausted. Elated but exhausted.
It
has been quite a year - a year of firsts. A first child brings new experiences
not just for him, but for us as well. We noted the first time he did everything
and where possible, recorded it on video. There was his first smile, the first
time he rolled himself over, the first time he sat up, the first time he consumed
something other than milk, the first time he ate chocolate, the first time he
crawled, and of course the first time he walked. I
thought Aidan was a fairly straightforward name. It's not that uncommon,
yet it is constantly subject to various permutations. Members of Mrs Holford's
Welsh family sometimes call him Hayden, a common Welsh name. Others call him Adrian.
This occurs often enough that I was tempted the other day to buy a key ring or
some other trinket from a rack with all the items personalised. Mrs. Holford protested,
insisting that his name isn't Adrian. Lately,
we have taken to combining the two and calling him Hadrian. We worry a bit, because
this changes our usual diminutive of "Aidie" to "Hades". I
get bored with "Hadrian" after a while and just insert the names of
other second century Roman emperors, most often Trajan, but also Marcus Aurelius
or Commodus on occasion. Aidan
no longer looks like the 8 pound, 14 ounce slightly cone-headed helpless baby
I first held in the operating theatre. He is now almost 23 pounds and 31 inches
tall. While he hasn't completely kicked the breast milk habit, he eats regular
food and lots of it. Though he has been able to walk since 8 ½ months,
he is now fully bipedal, crawling only very occasionally and mostly just to get
from toy to nearby toy just out of reach. He is a little boy. Mrs
Holford and I have already developed different approaches to child-raising. Since
we are now both experts, we will soon be adding to the published literature on
the subject. My book will be entitled, No, Daddy Holds the Spoon: How to Raise
a Tidy Toddler. Kelly is working on Finger Painting with Spagettios and
Other Mealtime Fun. I do not understand how one bowl of food can completely
cover child, chair, and carpet like a thick coat of paint. It seems to defy the
laws of nature. And speaking
of food, I know that teenagers eat a lot. However, pound for pound, I would pit
Aidie against an adolescent any day. He is a tiny human hoover. He must consume
his entire weight every day. From the time he gets up until the moment he is put
down for the night, he eats. Breakfast, snacks, lunch, snacks, more snacks, dinner,
and bedtime feed - it never stops. We go through a lot of raisins and Cheerios. His
current favourite is Clementine oranges. They have been on special offer at Safeway,
so I picked up two bags for £2. I try to feed them to him one segment at
a time. Yesterday I got distracted while I was handing them over to him. He reached
up to the table, grabbed the whole fruit and shoved it into his mouth. It looked
a bit like a python that had just eaten a rabbit. Slowly the orange dissolved
and his cheeks reduced from twice their normal size. The
last vestige of babyhood is his yet-to-be fully developed command of the English
language. He understands English quite well. I am amazed that he can respond to
fairly complex sentences, or deliberately chose not to respond. He is very verbal,
but the only words we know he is saying are: mama, dada, okay, papa, nana, bye-bye,
done, bad, and no. He also speaks Cat, though he hasn't mastered all of the inflections
of "meow". He learned that word in Texas. (Is it just me, or it Cat
perhaps related to Chinese? It seems very inflectional.) He
loves books. I am concerned however that he does seem more interested in the pictures
than in the text. Recently I have tried to read picture-free books to him. I have
tried a variety of titles, including Columba: Pilgrim and Penitent and
Celtic Christianity in Early Medieval Wales, but they don't seem to hold
his attention in the same way as The Very Hungry Caterpillar, The Very
Busy Spider, and Goodnight Moon. He also likes a picture book of common
household items, the text of which in Chinese. This means either he's picked up
Chinese from my parents' cat or he doesn't really care about the text. He
also loves people. Aidan is quite the extrovert. We will have to watch him carefully
over the next few years, as he is perfectly happy to go with strangers. In fact,
the first time he just took off walking on his own across open floor was to visit
with a complete stranger at the doctor's office. He prefers an audience and is
happy to entertain. All he really needs are tap shoes and a cane. He may be destined
for the performing arts or politics. We hope he will use his outgoing nature to
live up to his namesake as a missionary. Like St Aidan he may be called to a hostile
heathen country like England. I
often contemplate the potential that is hidden inside Aidan. What will he do with
himself? I think of all the potential I had and how I've wasted most of it, no
doubt to the great disappointment of my family and maybe even a few friends. The
next eighteen years may go by as fast as the last eighteen. In all likelihood,
they will go by much faster. The time will be here very soon when I will be there
for guidance and advice and nothing else - if that. He will probably ignore everything
I have to say. I only pray that he doesn't make as many stupid decisions as I
have. For the next few
years, I will be making the critical decisions in Aidie's life. Regardless of
the wisdom he will have, he is dependent upon mine. The more you know me, the
scarier that probably is to you. Talk about somebody in need of the mercies of
God. Well, it's one year
down and many more to go.
|