4898/17818
Across town today to go to a friend’s baby’s first birthday party - it was actually a birthday party for all of her NCT group so there were lots of babies and older kids too. We didn’t really know anyone except our friend, but to be honest I was so tired that I was happy just to sit back and watch the chaotic ballet that is babies interacting with each other.
Phoebe continues to be a lot more social and outgoing than her awkward parents and gravitated straight to a little wigwam style wendy house where other babies were sitting in a circle and got stuck in with trying to start up a conversation of babble. And older girl then came and sat in the middle of the circle, blocking Phoebe from the group, which you could see confused her, but she just tried to crawl round to join in some more.
She’s a pretty good sharer too and generally can’t understand why other kids don’t share toys. But today she fell in love with a weird little toy that you could push along the ground but had all kinds of buttons and swirly bits on it. An older kid took it off her, but she went and took it back. “She snatched it off me,” complained the girl (who to be honest was much too old for this toy), but Phoebe can still play the baby card which means you can argue that she doesn’t understand social norms. I think Phoebe did understand though. She just wanted the toy and knew that because she was a baby she would win this game of top trumps. Was it just that the toy was prized by others that made it so valuable or was it a great toy? I don’t know, but all the babies tried to get it off her and unusually Phoebe wouldn’t share it. A ridiculously cute and wide-eyed birthday baby was rebuffed by our big bully of a baby and looked upset. We apologised to her dad and said that Phoebe usually shared, but he said he thought that the notion of sharing was an odd one and not necessarily human nature. He pointed out that we wouldn’t be delighted if someone came and took our phones and started using them and that we wouldn’t expect to share them. Which is true.
Phoebe took the toy into the wendy house and sat on her own with it. “That’s how it works out, Phoebe,” I said, “You’ve got your toy but you’ve got no friends.” To be honest she looked happy enough. So maybe she takes after me after all.
And later I celebrated being back home with my wife with a take-away and a bottle of champagne and Mary Beard’s programme about the Roman Empire. "Could we be more any decadent?” my wife asked - once you have a baby your definition of decadence does shift somewhat. It was very lovely though.
