Bill and Ted's excellent adventure

The boy came home with the nursery mascot - Ted the Teddy Bear just before heading off to Scotland with his dad. Something about this didn't quite sound true to me, but apparently this is a common thing that school's and nurseries do now. Foisting responsibility for some raggedy stuffed animal on some poor parents and then forcing them to keep a journal of the various goings on.

Journal it? Crikey. And then I looked at what other parents had done. Lots of colour pictures. Pages and pages and pages of journal writing - Ted went to Venice. Ted loved the Cathedral of San Marco. Ted. Ted. Ted.

I was just going to print out a few pics on our black and white laser printer and maybe caption it. But the ViL balked. Something in his competitive spirit thought that wasn't good enough. Especially since he'd gone to all the trouble of actually taking the pictures (I was at home in London!)

But instead of doing that, I fired up a Mac app called Comic Life 2 and pulled together a picture comic.

OK, Northern Scotland ain't Venice. But I think this puts the handwritten, glued and taped entries of previous parents to shame. And that's what counts!

Bill and Teds excellent adventure

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Metamorphosis

Four-year-old Buddy and I saw this butterfly - a pretty thing. Orange. We talked about how we liked butterflies and whether I liked them. (I do). And whether I liked caterpillars (I don't, they eat my plants). And metamorphosis.

"Caterpillars turn into butterflies," Buddy said.

I was impressed. "That's right!" I said enthusiastically.

He was quiet for a moment. "And after they turn into butterflies, they turn into chickens. And then elephants," he reported with conviction.

The budding photographer

When Buddy was a baby, he loved to pose for the camera. Now at four, like his mom, he much prefers to be behind the camera. He's always asking me to hold and use the camera. And he's fairly careful with it (although he still has a tendency to get fingerprints on the lens, grrrr)

On a visit to our local hospital (don't panic, it's on the way back from a local playground and there's a nice Marks and Spencers Simply Food there, too) he asked for the camera and decided to take pictures of people waiting outside. Relatives of patients, staff - I presume. I actually think these are pretty good 'street' portraits. I made him ask for permission to take the pictures. He loved it - taking the pictures and interacting with his subjects and so did these women!

Little Lord Fauntleroy

We're off to America soon, land of cheap children's clothing (and cute). So we did a big old clear out of Buddy's closet. I've been putting off buying any new trousers for the boy thinking we could make do, but the poor lad has had several growth spurts so other than a couple of trousers he's been mostly wearing high waters.



But actually stuffed in the way back, back of the cupboard - and I can't imagine why this outfit wasn't in regular circulation - I found a little blue coverall set that just about fit. This is one of those classic outfits my mother simply cannot resist. Although she should. Not only is the boy guaranteed a drubbing on the rougher playgrounds of South London - but the back opening one piece is really beyond a little lad who needs to get to the toilet on his own.





Still these pictures should be handy for future blackmail. Do I feel guilty? Not in the least, especially after the boy packed the washing machine detergent tray full of dishwasher salt today.

Descending into the Wandle Wasteland...

...how a fun family outing turned into a Cormac McCarthy novel...

It's not my fault that the boy has a crossbow. I never wanted him to have one in the first place. And the crossbow that the Vol-in-Law ordered for Buddy turned out to be far more weapon like than toy like. It's black. It's metal. It can zing the little darts quite far and quite hard. But who am I to overlook a fun toy? So on the first warm day of the year, I took the boy and his cross bow down to the Wandle Wildlife Park - or as it actually is..and abandoned, filled in and overgrown wastewater treatment plant which sits underneath a major powerline pathway: the Wandle Wasteland.







We first fired the crossbow at the Ikea bag we'd concealed it in. But soon the boy tired of that and began shooting a wild. A dart went off into the rough. The boy began down some creepy path and soon found an abandoned supermarket trolley. What heaven for a small boy.



We dragged it out into the open and played around some more. Buddy was desperate to take it home. I resisted my natural inclination to bring home 'found goods' and said no. But I let him climb around on it and we shot at it with the crossbow.





At one point, a middle class man walking through the 'park' happened upon our fun (I think I was aiming at some crows) and seemed quite frightened by our manner. I could see him taking in the 'bulldog' t-shirt - purchased in a moment last year when I was feeling quite hopeful about England's World Cup prospects (i.e. before it began), but now looks more appropriate for an English Defense League rally. I could see him taking in the trolley and assuming we'd taken it from Sainsbury's. And the look of derision as he saw me hand the crossbow to they boy....I did feel a slight inward cringe of shame.

But then a couple of old drunks happened by. I would have said they were homeless, but I suspect they weren't. They did have two mutt like dogs with them, but no possessions. The had the tremor and pallor of long-time abusers. They didn't have all their teeth. They smiled at the boy's trolley antics and asked about the cross-bow. The woman asked me where I was from. The man wanted to see the boy fire the crossbow and cheered enthusiastically and Buddy insisted that the man have a try, too. Turns out he was raised in Indiana and had lived in LA for quite some time. He asked me if I'd ever been to Indiana. "Only driven through," I had to reply.

"Tennessee's a beautiful place," he said. "You just can't beat it in the spring or the fall."

And I had to agree.

Knights of the realm

Buddy is very fond indeed of his Knights and his castle. The Vol-in-Law doesn't like me calling it his dollhouse, but that's what it is. A dollhouse of few comforts and a cast of tooled up fellows with barely concealed rage.



And the boy often pretends to be a knight or a king. He's a king a lot.

The other night he told me "I'll be the King, and you be a knight. And Daddy be a knight."

This sounded like a lot of standing around in mud in heavy armor in inclement weather and possibly some kind of physical danger. "I don't want to be a knight. Perhaps I could be a special advisor. Can I be a special advisor?"

"Of course, you can," he said. "You be a special advisor, after you a knight."

Maternal fears borne out

I was randomly looking through my old posts when I found this one on my pre-natal fears that Buddy would have no sense of humor. My husband scoffed at my fears. But now we're coming to grips with the fact that the boy may well have inherited the no-humor gene from his father's side of the family.

When he was a baby, I longed to hear him laugh. He didn't. He wasn't a laugher. He laughs now. But mostly at slapstick. He laughs when someone else gets hurt. He laughs when we punch him. No seriously, the boy begs to be hit. He loves rough-housing. I avoid it as much as I can, 'cause it creeps me out. But he never laughs so loud or so gaily as when things have got out of hand. The only time I've ever heard him genuinely laugh at tv was at Tom and Jerry.

He sometimes laugh when we laugh. But it's a forced laugh. Ha, ha, ha. A laugh akin to the praising of the fine hues in a painting by the color blind.

He's missing some teeth, too. They just never came in. But that can be fixed with money. A lack of a rich, complex sense of humor can't.

I'm hoping that as his language skills become more sophisticated his sense of humor will develop, too. But I'm lowering my expectations.

Gone for a soldier

I took the boy up to The Mall on Sunday to watch the annual march of civil war re-enactors. No, not the civil war that I grew up with, but that older one - Cavaliers v. Roundheads. I've been living in London for over a decade - but I'd never heard of this gathering (fourth Sunday of every January) which commemorates the execution of King Charles and the brief establishment of republican government in England. I couldn't tell if they were celebrating or commiserating (though some of them were laying a wreath) - but since I suppose there were some for both camps, they'd chosen to draw a veil over the old rivalries.

Buddy loves his knights, so I assumed he'd like some of these 17th century blokes who stand somewhere in between knights of old and modern soldiers in terms of uniforms. And since I'd been away for work for a couple of days, I thought I'd take him into town for a bit of treat.

When we arrived at Green Park station, it seemed a little more crowded than I'd anticipated and as we walked through the park I could see hordes of people around Buckingham Palace. Turns out it was changing of the guard time (I didn't even know they did it in the winter, but they do - every other day instead of daily in the warmer months). We hit The Mall just in time to see the guards arriving in all good pomp and playing a suitably militaristic tune.

The boy was enthralled.

And although he enjoyed it when one of the re-enactors showed him how a match lock worked, he wasn't as excited by the civil war stuff as I thought he might be.

We followed the march all the way down to Horse Guards Parade, but he lost interest as they milled around before ostensibly forming a square. (Inadvertently, and despite the steward's advice we managed to line up between opposing armies).

But he got excited again when he dashed into the museum of the household cavalry. I refused to pay for entry, as I've already had more than a lifetime's share of regimental museums touring around with his father and I wouldn't have wanted the Vol-in-Law to miss out on the opportunity. I had to literally drag him away from the displays.

He was intrigued by those standing guard as well, though he didn't want to pose with the sentry as many tourists do.

I couldn't quite understand why he was so interested a couple of bored squaddies, when there was a whole history parade going on outside with many of the members of the civil war society ready - eager even - to be nice and explain stuff.

But then I thought - even a three year old can tell the difference between a serving soldier and some middle aged, slightly nerdy, history buffs. And those household cavalry types are pretty intriguing. We saw some at the Wimbledon stables open day a few months ago - and those tall young fellows with their polished breastplates, snug uniforms and their thigh-high shiny boots...the boy could hardly tear his eyes away and to be honest, I had trouble looking elsewhere, too. Those uniforms were designed to make the girls swoon and the boys sign up.

And it looks like they've found a potential recruit.

Reaffirming the patriarchy

Last night I took the boy swimming, so we were a little late home. The Vol-in-Law was still in the salt mine of paper marking, so I turned on the tv and told Buddy that I was going to start making dinner.

"No!" he told me sternly. "Only Daddy tells you to make dinner."

What???

"Buddy, I can autonomously choose to..." my voice trailed away and silently finished with "make dinner for the menfolk."

It's true that kids say the durndest things, but where do they get this stuff? It's not like he doesn't come from a long and distinguished line of working women. From a "pop star" of the turn of the century to small business owners and factory workers and artists, his female progenitors have been hard workers and money makers - and I'm not even sure I've got enough fingers to count the degrees and certificates held by his grandmothers.

How do you even counter this stuff? Am I destined to have that resigned look that you often see in women who live in a household of men? I don't want to spend the rest of my life living in a frat house.

And that's not all. One of things he'll say regularly is "I got a penis. Daddy got a penis. You not got a penis. Ha, ha, ha." Bloody hell. Did Freud ever describe penis hubris?

Arrrr

It's International Talk Like a Pirate Day!




Avast ye mateys. The Good Ship Vol Abroad has been taken over by pirates.

An idea

The boy is not the best talker, but he's making rapid improvement. And he's surprising me with introductions of new concepts - like "maybe"

Today I was talking to him about what we'd have for dinner, and he said that he wanted to go to a local cafe. Well, really a caf, a greasy spoon. We go there pretty regularly because the food is good in that greasy spoon kinda way, but really we go because they've always been amazingly welcoming to the boy - from the breastfeeding infant days to the squalling times, to the days when he couldn't manage being at the table without spilling - and even the time (when I was reading a tabloid paper instead of paying attention) when he scrawled on their formica table top with a ball point pen. All that, and they always greet us with a smile. Not only that, but when we gave them a Christmas card with his picture on it - they displayed it - and again the following year. They're still up. They have more pictures of my son prominently on show than we do.




But they close at mid-afternoon. And when they close, their windows and doors are shuttered with metal, so you know they are really closed. So I had to tell him that we couldn't have dinner there. He was disappointed, but seemed to accept that maybe we could eat there for breakfast or lunch sometime this weekend.

We'd moved on from talking about dinner to talking about animal sounds.

And then he turned around, raised a finger as a kind of point of order and said "I have an idea." I had to ask him to repeat himself - as he'd never said "I have an idea," before and I was a little surprised.

"Ok Buddy," I said "What's your idea?"

And he went into a quite convoluted explanation, complete with hand motions of sawing and sounds and actions.

His idea was to break into the cafe. Great. His first ever proposal of a plan was a heist. Criminal activity in the pursuit of fried eggs. It looks like it's gonna be fun years ahead.

Hen pecked

I probably should've taken the matter more firmly in hand. He was much more wary of the animals after that. He returned to the chickens later to throw bark chippings at them.

Buddy, a boy of few words

Buddy's still not really a talker. He's a toddler of very few words. On all the developmental benchmarks the boy is behind.

Of course, it's said that Einstein didn't talk until he was three and look what happened to him (dead-end job as a patent clerk, hounded from his own country, and a head full of messy hair).



Still, even with very few verbal skills - the boy clearly knows how to change the subject.

Bad to the bone

I'm lucky I'm not sporting a black eye. Buddy has discovered badness. Badness in the form of hitting. Hitting and throwing things. He threw the remote control with astonishing force at the bridge of my nose. A couple of days ago. And it still hurts. He just laughed and laughed.




On the other side of the coin, he's also discovered helpfulness. He likes to throw things away. We now give him things to put in the trash, and he's so pleased with himself when the lid of the bin slams down. We gave him a plate to set on the table for dinner tonight, with some assistance he managed to get it to the right place. One of the the phrases he's learned at nursery is "Tidy-up time." He says it "taahda uh ta" and makes a valiant attempt at wiping down if you hand him a paper towel. Of course, sometimes he gets a little carried away and pitches out something useful, like his milk bottle.

Soft landings at the Temple of Doom

Buddy is a climber. The swings are so last month now. He's not interested in playing on something unless it's likely to cause his parental attendant a spell of nerves.



Today at the playground, I watched a mother compare her little fellow with Buddy. She said "He's an adventurous one." I replied "He sure is." She asked me how old he was and when I said fifteen months she said "He's the Indiana Jones of the baby world."

Your kid has problems

Over at Seed Dispersal Mechanisms (no, it's not an agricultural blog, it's an agricultural metaphor), Furrow asks whether it's better to be the parent of the playground aggressor or the playground victim?

I don't know. Buddy has a nice line in car jacking during his weekly playgroup. He was in the habit of crawling up to the toddle cars and hanging onto the door of an occupied vehicle. He only wanted to play, but it was often distressing to the kiddie driver, sometimes to the point of tears (wusses) .


Bad cop?

He's either grown out of it, or I've largely managed to break him of his early criminal bent. At any rate, the unwritten code of conduct at playgroup is pretty fierce. You better make your kid share, or else.

But that's fairly mild compared to what I saw recently at the playground.

A boy, maybe four, pushed a small girl (I'd guess 2 and a half) down the stair side of the slide. The attending dad couldn't see what happened, but he asked and I answered, truthfully, that the boy had pushed her down. (Is that tattling?) Mum-of-boy was mortified. She made him apologise and he was dragged off. I thought for good. But apparently it was just a chat and maybe some time out because he re-emerged and made a bee-line for Buddy.

I was pretty wary and stuck close. Extra close. His mother stuck close, too. She seemed pleased by his interest in Buddy and explained to me that he had a 4 month old brother at home. He tried to stop Buddy from playing with the heavy playground gate. And while that could have been interpreted as concern - Buddy does like to bang the gate open and shut in a potentially finger-smashing way - I didn't think it was. When his mother told him to stop, he drew his foot back and kicked Buddy in the leg. Hard.

Now Buddy's a tough old nut, and he didn't cry. But he was certainly perplexed. I knew his leg hurt, but I could tell his feelings were hurt, too. He couldn't understand why that boy had done that. Truth be told, neither could I.

Before I could remonstrate, the mother ran off. I mean she ran. She told her little delinquent that they were going home right then - but she actually left him behind. He followed, though, screaming and tantrum-ing.

I wanted to yell after her "Hey, where's the apology to my kid?" or "Hey, you better keep a close eye on that boy with your four-month-old, your kid has problems." But I didn't. She was too far away.

So, maybe - unless you're in deep denial - it's better to be the mom of the playground victim.


Is that bad kid still here?

Well watered

I've been told that my grandparents' house was one of the first to built with air conditioning. I don't remember exactly when it was completed, but some time in the early to mid fifties. The air conditioner was water cooled which meant all the heat of the Tennessee summers were carried away in a hose pipe.

The same machine was in use all through my childhood. So I remember the constant run of the hose pipe and my grandfather moving the hose throughout the day to water the shrubs out the front, the tomato plants, the watermelon patch and the drifts of cannas. But best of all, we grandkids could play with the hosepipe as much as we wanted - and the water was warm. Not the best for drinking, but great for splashing around in and filling paddling pools (except on the very hottest of days).

It was so warm, in fact, my grandfather rigged up a little shower system on the back porch, and screened from the traffic of Springer Road by overgrown hedges, we could bathe outside at night.

There must have been other such systems in existence, but I don't remember hearing about them and I certainly haven't heard of any others like that now. When the unit had to be replaced in the mid 80s - a normal air conditioner was installed. No more warm water eternally on tap.

Kids like hosepipes though, no matter what the temperature. We stripped Buddy down in the garden yesterday (yes, a little of the edge of the sub-arctic chill of British summer has finally melted off) and let him play with the hose.



It's not that hot though, and the water from the hose is cold. We saw him sucking in his tummy from the freezing water and his flesh was cool to the touch. Still, he kept playing. But I wished he could have experienced that warm water hosepipe.

A real live cow

When I was a sophomore at the University of Tennessee, I took a friend of mine up to Cades Cove. She was beginning her third year, but had never been. It was early Autumn, and though the color wasn't high, I expected we'd see lots of deer. And we did. She'd never seen white tail deer before and she was amazed when I predicted that they'd flash their white tails when I startled them.

But I was even more amazed to find that she was less interested in the deer than in the cattle. There was still at least one working farm in the Cove then and she'd never seen cows before. Not up close like that. See, she was from Philly. A City Girl.

Now, I wasn't raised on a farm or anything like that. But I guess I had a basic working knowledge of cows and certainly I'd been on other people's farms and my granddad sold supplies to farmers. And from a young age I'd been to my cousins' other grandparents and my uncle had let me bottle feed calves as a special treat. You have to make your own fun in small town Tennessee.

I understood that not everyone had experiences like that, but I thought everyone had seen a cow. But I took real joy in her fascination. I did have to explain to her that it wasn't such a good idea to hop the fence and get in with the bullocks trying to pet them.

I don't know what they have in Philly, but around the UK there are City Farms. Back when the Vol-in-Law and I were first married in Sheffield and had no money we used to regularly visit Graves Park and city farm. That was a great city farm. There was a petting area and they had acres of pens stocked with rare breeds - heritage pigs and the woolly mammoth looking highland cattle.





When we lived in Coventry, we took one sad, sorry visit to a city farm in what's described in policy circles here as a "deprived area". Apparently, they'd had some unfortunate incidents in the past and so visits to the animals had to be supervised. We were escorted around the livestock by a sickly looking ten year old who kept a close and suspicious eye on how we petted the pony.

Buddy likes animals and I certainly wouldn't want him growing up to be a young adult who's never seen a cow up close and personal.


Early agricultural training



Where we live now, there's a city farm within walking distance of our house. It's a long walk, but it's doable. On Sunday, we went there, breaking our trip with a stop at an Italian restaurant and a glass of wine overlooking the River Wandle. (Sounds swish, but the Wandle is little better than a drainage ditch in some places).

Deen City Farm isn't exactly a petting zoo, but if you go at a certain time (2 to 3 and some other window in the morning hours) you can buy a plastic cup full of feed pellets to coax the goats and sheep and alpacas close enough to the bars of their pens. to stick your hand in and stroke their woolly coats.

We didn't spend much time on the cows this last visit, as they're not really on eye level with the baby.

Buddy's happy to see the animals, but he's not amazed and he's not cowed. He kicked a greedy goat in the head.




And stuck his finger in the aviary, much to the delight of some hungry, curious parakeety type things. The bird bit him on the finger, which freaked me out a little (I have a slight avian phobia) but phased him not at all. He withdrew his finger, considered his position and then poked the bird again.

Fete

The school where I do some volunteering had its annual summer fayre or fete or fair or whatever it's called. So, of course, we went down to have a look. Without Buddy, I think our visit might have lasted fifteen minutes. But Buddy loves to see other children and so he had a grand old time.

There was a big BBQ, with women in hijab serving lamb kebabs with spicy Indian sauces. There was a bouncy castle (Buddy's too little for that), and cotton candy (candy floss in Brit-speak) and a baked good stall and bric-a-brac and books for sale and various other ways to fleece money out of fayre-goers.

And there was the money-making scheme that I remember so well from my school-going, church youth-group attending days.



Krispy Kreme donuts.

And they tasted better than I remember. (I've been sort of down on Krispy Kreme since I got thrown out of the one in Knoxville - for singing. As I recall, the other patrons loved it.)

The man at the donut stall (a parent)had gotten a very good deal on the donuts (I wasn't clear if he got them free or not). And he got a lot of balloons, too. One of them he gave to Buddy, who was thrilled!

Our brilliant and brief career as pageant parents

The local Catholic church* had its summer fayre yesterday. Among the fundraising activities, was a Bonny Baby competition (entry fee £2). When I saw the flyer, I thought:

"Heck yeah, that cash prize/blue ribbon/certificate/goldfish in a bag is as good as mine. Surely, we have the bonniest baby this side of SW19."

I mentioned it to the Vol-in-Law who I thought would surely dismiss the idea out of hand, but he was keen. Eager, even. "I know we have the best looking baby, but it would be nice to have some official recognition."

We even discussed outfits and bemoaned the fact that it was unlikely that we could get him to wear a hat for the period of the judging for maximum cuteness and to cover his still somewhat lumpy head - a potential point loser. Even so, we figured as long as he was in a reasonable mood and we dressed him in bright colors we'd walk the contest.

But then he had the "accident".

Oh, it wasn't much at first. I noticed a scratch on his nose when I picked him up from daycare. But overnight the scratch inflamed a little and scabbed over in a most unsightly way. And in Bonny Baby competitions, I reckon they generally look for a child without blemish.

The Vol-in-Law immediately suspected sabotage. Some other parent, with some less attractive, but still quite cute baby got their child to scratch Buddy's nose in some Tonya Harding -esque bid to knock out the stiffest competition.

Quite clearly he wasn't competition ready - and though I briefly considered smearing a little concealer over the scratch - I couldn't quite bring myself to do that. I didn't want to be that kind of parent.

But I needn't have worried about becoming one of those obsessive pageant parents. The scab fell off and there was but the merest hint of a scratch, but I just couldn't be bothered find a clean, cute outfit and struggle with him over the hat. So we went to the playground instead.

photoshopping away the imperfections

________

*I'm not sure it's technically our local. We probably fall outside the boundaries of the dioceses or parish or whatever it is even though it's definitely the closest Catholic church to our house.