Lullabies in Brobdingnag

I think my son likes me because I have no shame. This is ironic as this same characteristic often causes adults who know me (particularly his mother and grandparents) to roll their eyes skywards in despair.

I will quite happily sit making ridiculous but giggle inducing faces at him for hours on end, and have little problem in involving him in adult life at such a young age. One of his favourite trips out was the day we visited the solicitor and he sat on the desk leaning back against my shoulder cooing and babbling at every possible break in the otherwise quite expensive and adult conversation between me and my solicitor (and why shouldn’t babies be along for the ride whenever possible? I don’t take him on site when visiting clients, but given the often dull nature of adult life it’s quite fun to see the world through the eyes of someone so tiny that even a small excursion is a journey into the land of the giants... this is another admirable fatherly sentiment and nothing at all to do with the fact that I’m too tight to pay for child care and conveyancing!)

Perhaps my favourite place to take the baby is the post office. The staff there are lovely and always happy to see the baby when we go in – whereas the baby thinks he’s visiting a rather creepy zoo where they only exhibit middle-aged women behind safety glass, so it’s really a win-win situation. However this all changed a few days ago when we visited the post-office with the baby in the carrier and he decided to wake up and howl. The noise was deafening and, as only baby cries truly are, mentally debilitating. Faced with this onslaught I went for the only solution guaranteed to calm a crying baby. In the post office, with a large queue behind me and two slightly bemused ladies looking out from behind the glass I started to sing, not the slightly sad embarrassed whimper that some parents seem to manage, but a full on song, first in competition with, then drowning out his cries. When he realises someone’s singing he stops crying like a car who's tank has run dry, gazes and then forgets to stay awake. I went with the somewhat rude version of ‘What shall we do with the drunken sailor’; within the first verse he was quiet, and by the end he was asleep. Quite what everyone else thought of my singing I don’t know, but I think my son likes me because I have no shame.

DAD

Daily Exercise

One of the most useful things about having a baby is being able to do away with dumbbells. The little guy started off at just under 3kg (6lb 6oz). He is growing steadily and as I use him as a dumbbell my arms are keeping up with his growth.

Readers are probably divided into two camps and I’ll have to deal with you separately. For argument’s sake we could call these two groups “boys and girls”, although these distinctions are blurred by the lovely champion from Khazakhstan (pictured), together with the current trend for metro-sexual males whose lack of upper body strength and desire for emotional-oneness would make Gandhi weep oxymoronic tears of masculine shame.

The first group are thinking “tell me more, I’ve had to cancel my gym membership because nappies are so expensive.” For those of you who are thinking of using the baby for weight-lifting there are some essential safety guidelines:

DO NOT DROP THE CHILD

- Make sure the child is firmly held in your man-paw at all times.

DO NOT PRETEND TO DROP THE CHILD

- Whilst you may think that it’s funny to give them a little fright, this will lead to a lack of calmness and trust, and then when the child struggles, you will drop the child!

DRESS THE CHILD IN SUPERHERO THEMED CLOTHING

- This way their little brain will tell them that they’re battling King Kong or flying, rather than being used as a cheap substitute for exercise equipment.

COUNT AND TALK TO THE CHILD

- This will stop them becoming disorientated and showering you with baby-vomit.

DO NOT LIFT BY THE HEAD... or anything else that might come off

- This is a mistake you’d only make once! I've found a good technique is to lift the baby with the heel of my hand just below his ribs and my digits splayed across his ribcage. He is supported and will find falling off difficult (unless you have tiny hands or a huge baby).

STOP IF THE BABY SHOWS SIGNS OF DISTRESS

- This could also lead to struggling, or worse, a nappy fill so violent that it is forced out between the poppers in the baby grow.

The other group are thinking (in a high pitched, rising tone) “you can’t do that to my baby!”. For those of you in the shrill camp, realistically, what are you going to do about it? Thanks to the aforementioned baby-lifting we’re much stronger than you, and when we hold the child up that high, you can’t reach! On a more serious note (just in case the response to “what are you going to do about it?” was “file for divorce!”), the partner who is exercising with the child is involving the little person in their life, modelling a positive healthy lifestyle and (by virtue of not dropping the baby) building up trust and confidence between parent and child – which is exactly what you’ve been asking us to do in other nagging sessions conversational interludes recently.

DAD