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Phoebe has learned to climb the stairs. It’s a development that has appeared almost from nowhere. She’s been crawling for quite a while and now pulls herself up to stand, but the stair climbing thing was a surprise, mainly in that she got what to do as soon as she first tried it. She only climbed the four steps that go from our kitchen to our dining room, but that’s still massive. This is like when everyone went on about the Daleks being useless because they couldn’t go upstairs and then finding out that they could fly. Except my daughter is much more dangerous than a Dalek, though mainly to herself. She was through the dining room, into the hall and trying to eat some of the dry food from the cat bowl. I was tempted to let her have it. It’s a lot cheaper than the food she currently eats.
I don’t think it will be long before she’s walking and running and then things are going to get really tasty (and not just the cat food), but each development, whilst adding a new terror, brings new pleasure. I am having enormous fun hanging out with this tiny version of myself, with the same glint in her eye and sense of mischief, making her a just punishment for all the chaos I caused as well as a fabulous reward.
Catie took her across town today to have lunch with friends and Phoebe was recognised on a train platform by a woman who used to work as a waitress at the restaurant at the top of our road. That’s surely quite unusual, as most babies blend into one, but this happy infant makes an impression on those she meets. She’s made a good start in this first year and I hope she keeps on laughing and charming people and doesn’t inherit my self-consciousness and over-worrying and trepidation. She certainly tackled this steps without fear and so I reckon that within 18 months she’ll be a much better skier than I am, at least.
I pity my wife though as I feel Phoebe and me are going to make quite a team when it comes to cheeky naughtiness. My wife knew she was taking on one idiot when she married me, but she can not have anticipated there being two of us, ganging up to create even more childishness. I can’t wait til she starts communicating properly.
I looked after her for the beginning and end of the day, but in between I recorded a short intro podcast for my Happy Now? tour and had a think about rewards for the AIOTM kickstarter. Hopefully both of those will spring into action next week.
And Phoebe fell straight asleep as I laid her in the cot for the second night in a row, so we got a Saturday night to ourselves. My amazing wife cooked a fish pie and we had a bottle of nice wine and watched Total Recall. What kind of woman have I married who will allow me such indulgence? A great one, of course. She hadn’t seen the film all the way through before and was dismissive of its cartoonishness and bad acting from Arnie and concluded that it wasn’t all that good. “Consider that a divorce!” I told her. She didn’t laugh.
Given how many times I have seen this film it’s amazing how much surprised me. I can’t believe how many times they use the hologram device in the “You think this is the real Quaid?” scene. The law of averages says that the baddies were likely to hit the real Quaid at some point in this 50/50 situation. Also why did he only use this brilliant device on this one occasion. He had it with him all the time, doesn’t bother with it and then overuses it in the space of three minutes, even though surely, once the baddies are aware of it, they will not be too surprised and shoot every Quaid they see. But that’s why the film is brilliant. And other actors would have attempted some comedic timing between “You think this is the Quaid?… it is!” but Arnie is better than that and just runs the line together without a pause. Genius.
