Daily Diversions (Web Log)

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.