Favourite things

Little man has just been laughing hysterically at The Enormous Turnip story. Specifically the bit where the turnip finally pops out of the ground and the old man falls on the wife and the wife falls on the boy and the boy falls on the little sister and the little sister falls on the dog and the dog falls on the cat and the cat falls on the mouse, who says 'Eeek!' He's finding the 'Eeek!' part hilarious and has also picked up the hot tip that you need to talk to seedlings to make them grow big. I think we'll be planting turnips at grandad's allotment this year. No idea what I'll do with them in the kitchen; ideas welcome.

Anyway, here are his other favourites:
Film: Cars. He loves it. I think Lightning McQueen is currently his biggest hero. I hate it. Mostly because of the noise. Which is ironic given the noisy sort of music I like to listen to whilst driving.

Song: Jack and Jill. When I ask what songs he wants at bedtime (he first instigated this ritual, possibly a crossover from what happens with daddy), he says: 'Broke his crown.' Although Baa Baa Black Sheep remains the only one he sings himself.

Food: Ice cream. Preferably Neapolitan. With bumps (chocolate vermicelli). At grandma and grandad's house. He never gets ice cream at home (my freezer's too full of last year's cabbage, which I never seem to find a use for).

Toy: His dumper truck. All kinds of things can be piled inside it, pushed around and then dumped in strategic places, such as the doorway between the dining room and kitchen.

Mummy-copying activity: Sewing. With a big blunt darning needle, a small square of linen and his choice of embroidery thread colour. He hasn't got the hang of pushing it back and forth through the fabric instead of wrapping it round yet so his masterpiece turns into a little screwed-up ball. The picture shows it after I have snipped it open again for further use.

My baby book journey

It started with Gina Ford. Oh yes. Oh no! My sister-in-law had raved about it. So I read it. I thought to myself, you've got to be joking. It is all about putting your baby in a routine, big style. It even tells you when you, as a new mother, can have a piece of toast. To the minute. I'm sure that in the small print somewhere it says you should adapt the routines to suit your baby but the message is clear: your baby should fit into the method, not vice versa.

Someone at a pregnant mums do suggested the Baby Whisperer as a more flexible way of doing things. Maybe it works for some, but for me it just seemed a bit wishy washy. And when I had the baby and was thinking about implementing it it also seemed full of holes.

Next up was the Sears Attachment Parenting book. I read this a few months after he was born and it felt more like it. I was already carrying little man in a sling a lot, because it calmed his fussing and crying. Unfortunately, I also wished I had read it earlier because I had missed the chance to get used to co-sleeping and by then it was never really going to happen. Not if I was going to get any sleep anyway. It also added to the guilt about failing to breastfeed.

I also read the Continuum Concept, which is quite heavy going. It's more of an academic study than a how-to. I liked some of the ideas, but I also thought to myself that I was never going to actually be able to replicate the community life of a rainforest tribe and that rainforests don't have the same dangers to worry about as we do (fast roads being the biggie).

And now? I think I've finally forgotten enough of what I read to be able to do what feels right without worrying that it's not what the book says. Of course, now I have to start on the discipline theories...

Having your first baby is just such a bewildering experience in our society that you find yourself grabbing for some theory to make sense of it all, some foolproof method that tells you what to do. And whichever end of the baby care spectrum you look at, you can always find some expert and some scientific study backing it up. The fact is, it's very hard to know what a baby is feeling or what lasting effects our actions towards them will have. And so it's easy to impose theories on them. Our only alternative is to try to be in tune with them, imagine what it's like to be a small, helpless being who can't communicate its needs clearly. I think what we'd imagine is wanting to be cuddled.

Silly old bear

I finally returned some books to the children's library yesterday. Good job there are no fines on children's tickets. I had decided not to get any more books out. This is because the location of the children's library in Wigan is highly inconvenient. I can get the bus for about £3.70. This is for a four-mile journey and back. Or I can drive and pay to park, for £1.30 minimum. Or I can drive, park at Tesco, walk for 10 minutes with a bag full of books then have to go and buy something in Tesco afterwards.

So I get to the library and little man runs over to the carousels full of older kids' books and starts pulling them all out and putting them in the wooden boxes full of baby books. In between returning all these books to the carousels I see a baby book that has actual real bits of knitting in it. Done on a machine, obviously, but I have to get it out. I see another 'Just like Mummy' book and it's cute so I decide to have that one too. Then I show little man one called Five Little Sleepyheads that has sliding tabs, which he has never used before. Each one changes a cuddly toy from awake to asleep.

So having realised that I am going to get some books out, I also head for the story CDs for the first time. Pooh Bear. Yes please. We have had it on in the car. Judy Dench is wonderful. I love the stories. I don't think little fella has noticed that it's no longer the radio or my new CD of Hungarian Gypsy music. (It's great, you can sing along without knowing the language because there's a lot of dum-de-dumming and la la la la LA la la la la LAing.)

But anyway, the whole point of this post is that I love the idea of Pooh Bear floating up to the top of a tree to find the honey by using a blue balloon to look like the sky and rolling himself in mud so he looks like a little black cloud. He doesn't get the honey because he ends up about 20ft away from the tree and Christopher Robin has to shoot the balloon to get him down. I think I had a deprived childhood; I don't remember ever reading Winnie the Pooh.

Little man hasn't noticed the new books either. He is sticking to the tried-and-tested Lift-the-Flap Tractors book. Personally, I would like to wring Henny the bloody Hen's neck and roast her for dinner.

Chickens and fox

No takers for a knitted fish?

1. Tolkien, The Return of the King

2. JK Rowling, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

3. Jean Liedloff, The Continuum Concept

4. Shakespeare, Merry Wives of Windsor, from the Complete Works

5. Pub Walks in Cheshire

Does anyone remember those riddles where you have to get so many chickens across a river in a small boat that can't carry all the chickens at once, but there's a fox on one bank waiting to eat them?

No? Oh well, I'll carry on anyway. Yesterday morning I took my car in for a service before daddy returned little man. I took out the car seat so we could go out with a friend later that day.

This morning I had to pick my car up. I could walk to the garage easily, half a mile. I could carry Ben to the garage easily. But I couldn't bring him and the car back without the car seat and I couldn't carry that to the garage. Oops. The solution? A phone call to my dad. Thanks.

As a result of this I didn't have to take little man to my parents to look after while I went to work, my dad took him down there instead. So I had an hour or so to do some sorting out. I found two necklaces I hadn't seen for ages!

Page 56, fifth sentence...

Seems to be the latest daft thing going round facebook: You grab the nearest book to you, whatever it is, turn to page 56 and make the fifth sentence your status. So I thought I'd give you five different ones from the bookshelf conveniently located to the left of my settee. I will knit a fish for anyone who can correctly name all five books ;-) I have just checked google and it can only help you with three of them.

1. 'That road I will take, nonetheless,' said Aragorn.

2. 'I'll just go and - er - finish off,' said Harry hastily, hurrying to pick up his fallen telescope and trainers.

3. The conscious mind is not what it seems to itself to be, nor does it have access to the programming secrets of the continuum it is evolved to serve.

4. Quick: This is my doing, now: Nay, said I, will you cast away your child on a fool, and a physician?

5. You are not going to trespass but, from this vantage point, the hidden pathway which cuts over stiles and fields down to the road can clearly be seen.

Answers tomorrow evening, if I remember by the time I've got to my mum and dad's after work.