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My daughter continues to be a delightful presence in our lives. She’s nearly always smiling and laughing and she’s generally sleeping well (though she likes to wake up at 5.30 if she knows that I am looking after her) and she takes in everything that is going on with a look of calm wisdom on her face. But it’s easy to look wise when you can’t speak. I suspect when she’s acquired language all kinds of insane nonsense and dumbass questions are going to come pouring out and I’ll realise this zen-like like troll is an idiot like the rest of us.
I am glad that she is of a bright and happy disposition, but it’s also slightly heartbreaking as I realise the time will come when the world will start to chip away at that innocent joy and I am fairly certain that I will be the one who accidentally lets her down and ruins everything. One day that face that lights up whenever someone she knows comes into the room will be grumpy and sullen and calling us all pricks. I will miss this innocent little caterpillar when she morphs into an insane and flitting butterfly. I hope she’ll still find stuff as funny as she does now and doesn’t turn back into that angry and furiously unhappy troll that she was in the first hour of her life.
There’s still nothing better than making this little girl laugh, even if, as with all the joy she brings me, it is tempered by terror and the certain knowledge of the loss of innocence. The beauty of finding everything funny is that it might make her a genius or a fool. I desperately want to know what she will become, whilst wishing she could stay like this forever. She’s learned to hold a ball and my wife says the other day she said “kuh, ah” and so we’re pretty certain that she was trying to spell out “cat” for us. Our child is the best child ever, clearly. And I say that as an unbiased observer of kids. Not that I go around observing kids. I’ve just observed them. It’s not a hobby.
Out and about I see tiny kids running around and being mad and annoying and strange and it fills me with typically mixed feelings. Looking forward to it and dreading it. Wanting things to speed up and slow to a standstill.
Tonight with my mother-in-law babysitting Catie and me managed to go out for a meal, but we were tired and we didn’t stay out long. Tragically we both saw the benefit of having a babysitter was that we could go to sleep. Nothing tragic about it at all. Delicious, delicious sleep.
