Kate's space

Callum is now one year and one week old. It is both the longest and shortest year I can remember, the best and most stressful but certainly the richest and most rewarding I can recall.

I can’t believe what I know now that I didn’t a year ago. There’s the practical stuff about washing machines, and nappies and the importance of a pillow buffer if the baby’s falls asleep on the bed. But more than the day-to-day, there’s nothing like having a baby to teach you that a lot of the time stressful situations are of your own making. There’s a lot to be said for letting go of trying to make Cal sleep and facing the fact he’s not tired so we’re all going to watch the Chaser.

Callum’s taught me how to find the joy or the game in the situation instead of the stress. I think the lesson comes in part from having a baby but also because he’s the person he is. For example, Callum has three laughs:

• A snicker that sounds like Ernie from Sesame St when he’s sneaking up to tickle you in the kitchen,
• A wry chuckle when you do or say something that is politely amusing
• A ringing giggle reserved for hi-jinx and tickles which is generally accompanied by one parent looking sheepish at the other when they find out the cause of the hilarity (case in point: the water fight Callum and I had today with his sippy cup which should have been drunk instead).

All of these I got to hear during his birthday celebrations. Last Friday we had Julie, Chris and Antonia arrive for the weekend festivities and the Vote 1 Callum party. A nice cruisy day with a picnic and a bit of catering was planned. A rather bizarre evening of French champagne and ‘teach yourself cake decorating’ followed by a Saturday morning lesson in reading weather maps ensued.

Not quite the relaxing, trouble free morning we’d been hoping for. So when we turned up at the park to discover the bandstand we’d booked as a wet weather plan full of 20 seven year old super heroes lining up to damage a piñata the ‘grown up words’ in the car were so strong Callum burst into tears…

Luckily some hasty negotiations, a quick decorating job lead by Andy and Lyn and a refusal to watch Superman teaching his minions how to make balloon animals in the drizzle meant that we actually had a lovely day.

What Callum’s taught me from all of this is that there was a piece of me that did see the funny in all of it, and a solid sense of perspective, there are very few situations where he can’t find something to smile about, except of course when it involves being denied access to the laptop…

‘’/,;,,,,,,,,,,,,,,’,k/bm      ‘’’’’

Callum's approaching eleven months old and the good news is we appear to have decided to keep him. It would be lovely if he'd sleep in just a little longer but until daylight savings kicks in there's not much hope of that. Otherwise there're no complaints.

Roh and I have been pondering lately, with so much that's already new in the world since we were small (yes, and dinosaurs roamed the earth) what will new look like to Cal? I can remember trying tofu for the first time (in China in 87), he tried it last week in the park near Wynyard station when the boys came in and met me for lunch. I remember going to the library at Sydney Uni to look at 'the World Wide Web' on Netscape in the early 90s, for Callum it's the place mumma works (wonder if he'll think I go to the internet, like I'm in Tron).

For Roh, he was in year 12 at Hunters' Hill High and felt like quite the sophisticate wagging school drinking Twinings Earl Gray tea as his first cafe experience, Callum's already on first name terms with several baristas and quite often has morning tea served by a waitress he's charmed into giving him an extra piece of toast at no charge.

Of course growing up in the city, new may be the stuff I just assumed. For example, Callum hasn't met cows yet. I reckon he's going to LOVE cows, and sheep and pigs. This is based on our recent trip to the zoo where the standout favourites were the Malayan Tapir, some mountain goats and the elephants he waved at (thanks to Raph and Megan teaching him to wave!)

Or it may be that new is going to be retro and Cal will find himself wearing flannel shirts and t-shirts with babies floating in swimming pools with no sense of irony, cranky with us for having lost our copy of Nevermind (on cassette) in a move at the turn of the century.

I feel compelled to note that new will be the technology as yet uncovered. When William Gibson is writing in the present because it’s more interesting than his imagined future, you’ve got to assume Callum’s technological future involves more data and less devices, more choice and less buttons, and don’t worry – mumma will find a way to put an ad on it.

But for now, new is discovering that the coloured plastic disks stack to make a pyramid. And that you can trust your knees to come down again when you try to move forward, and my favourite, the sound of two hands clapping.

Callum is learning a lot at the moment, and as a result so am I. For example when Cal learnt to roll over to the coffee table and take stuff down, I learnt three important things:

a)      babies don’t have to crawl to be somewhere other than where you left them.

b)      babies will find the potentially lethal thing on any surface

c)      babies like taking books out of plastic bags to put the bag close to their faces.

Don’t worry, he’s OK, he just liked the crinkly noise of the plastic but it was enough to send us to Ikea for higher coffee tables.

At the moment the real joy is not so much what he’s learning but how he learns it. He’s manipulating more with his hands. It seems like such a short trip from understanding he controls his fingers to grinning as he takes his dummy out of his mouth and puts it in mine or patiently picking up a bit of fluff from the carpet with his little fingers.

He’s also making a lot more noises, none of them seem to mean anything yet (especially if you accept my premise that dadadadadadada is not a word) but there’s a noise that sounds like ‘good’ and one that sounds like ‘yeah’ which he uses in response to questions.

The best bit is when he finds a way to take a newly learnt thing to the next level and the delight in those results. So blowing raspberries is fun, it makes your lips tingle and people smile, so he’ll quite often blow raspberries and have a little grin. But for a big laugh, try blowing raspberries while eating food… you get the same lip tingle but mum or dad make great noises as they flick sloppy weet-bix from their cheek.

The lovely Rohan and I also find him particularly clever for using one thing to effect another. I guess it’s much like our early primate ancestors taking pride when young Ugh first poked a reed into an ants nest as a straw. In our house it’s adding up to a lot of noise as toy a bangs toy b and a crumpled mound of play rug which has been pulled to bring the toys to Cal.

This is what I love watching most – the different paths to achieving a goal. A toy is out of reach so Callum will stretch for it, roll a bit, commando crawl. pull the rug until the toy comes to him or look up at me with big sad eyes and a grunt to suggest that I should be more attentive to the need to have said toy.

 I suspect at times I’ve replaced my previously significant consumption of TV with doting over my son. But I can justify it, watching his baby brain tick over, listening to the little whispers before he tries something or even leaping up to acquiesce to his request, must be educational for one of us. 

Dear Callum,

Today mumma has found the perfect red lipstick, looked at our backyard from a mile in the air and witnessed my first active volcano. And yet it feels like a horrid day. I’m somewhere over the South Pacific and when the captain came over the PA to let us know that there was an active volcano on an atoll on my side of the plane it made me sad, because you weren’t here to see it too.

 Mind you arling boy, a lot has made mumma sad today. After I said goodbye to you this morning the taxi driver asked how old you were and it made me cry. Laughing at Orlando Bloom in the second series of Extras made me cry too, because I wanted to see if your dad was laughing too but he’s not here either.

 It’s not even three months yet since I got such a pain from leaving you during the day for work and now I’m going away for six whole sleeps (actually 18 for you if you’re a good boy and nap like you’re supposed to).

 Right now you have the better end of this deal. This morning your seemingly impossible tasks were to swim across your yellow bear blankie to reach the brass handle on the chest in the lounge and perfect your imitation of the toy kiwi your grandad gave you. You seemed quite happy, and a little bemused about why mumma was acting strange when I left for work this morning. I don’t even know if you’ll notice that I’m not there tonight, or tomorrow.

 If you were any other person on the whole planet I couldn’t miss you as much as I do now, and I guess that’s what makes this love so different. Last year when I made this trip you were here too, kicking away, dozing through the humidity and keeping me awake on the plane, but keeping me company. Last year I promised dad that it would be a long time before I left him alone when I went away, because you would be there to keep him company.

 I don’t worry about you, because that would suggest that I thought something was wrong and I know your dad takes the best care of you. But I do miss you an awful lot already. I’m caught between begging you not to change while I’m gone and the excitement of what new things you’ll have discovered.

 OK bubba, take care of your dad, be gentle with your cats and dream a little dream of me. It’s time for me to put my feet up and watch a whole movie without having to make sure you’re just muttering in your sleep.  

 A couple of weeks ago now I was having one of those slow brain days. To express this I changed my personal message on IM to ‘A .32 calibre mind in a magnum world’. This is a reference to an episode of the West Wing where President Bartlett ‘accidentally’ refers to his opponent in this way while still on air.

Except that it’s not. The actual quote is “a .22 calibre mind in a .357 magnum world.” I found this out because Rohan and another friend of mine pointed it out once they read my version. Both the fellas observed that there’s no such thing as a .32 calibre – neither of them are gun nuts, Rohan’s certainly never held one of any calibre. So I had to ask how they’d known with such certainty.

 “I don’t know” they both said “it’s just a boy thing.” Rohan reckons he’s absorbed the information via a form of pop culture osmosis fuelled by Dirty Harry movies watched with friends as a teenager.

 And I thought, “Egads, one day I’m going to be living with a teenage boy”. And I assume, like all of this the knowledge will come with time, which is a good thing because there are elements of teenage boy behaviour which are as mysterious to me now as they were in the mid- eighties.

 Now I reckon Rohan and I are very gender neutral in how we approach our lives, and Callum and everything we want for him. And I’m fairly comfortable with my status as an ‘equal but not same’ feminist but it still feels like a guilty confession – I treat Callum like a boy, not a baby.

 It’s little things that have crept in over time. When he tries a new food or eats banana and yoghurt Callum likes to squish it between his fingers, mainly for the sound. This is now a game where the Cargo Boat has to avoid the Finger Pirates to get into Mouth Harbour (it’s his Cornish ancestry). Finger Pirates, would they be Finger Pirates if he was a girl…I doubt it.

 Then there’s the bumps on the head that are coming as he explores his ability to roll and arch his back. I’ve actually busted myself saying “Match injury, shake it off,” as I wait to see whether he’s going to cry this time.

 And today, in his little blue pants with red stripes down the side we had to have a luche libre wrestling match. Actually this involved me kind of rolling him around with my foot like he was an over excited puppy. So I swore an oath that I will also wrestle my niece and throw her upside down when she’s the same age – sorry Julie but it’s a matter of principle now!

 As I run him up the corridor under my arm as the Cally football I realise that while there’s things that make me afraid for him, I’m no longer afraid of him. At least, not unless he’s sitting on his dad’s shoulder being the Dread Pirate Rohan’s fierce parrot.