Babies Rule the World!

This is, I suppose, the essence of the Christmas message, which you can subscribe to regardless of your belief or affiliation.  (Unless you’re insane, of course.)  I hold no particular beliefs or affiliations, but the last few days have been a source of focus on this particular point.

I spend most Christmasses with fairly near, close, family, and the sleeping arrangements have therefore been fairly well established.  But this has been Boybaby’s first Christmas.  He’s eight months old, and knows what he likes.  So when I arrived on Tuesday at fizz o’clock (noon),  I had to do a rapid expectation adjustment on being told that I’d be sleeping on a put-up bed in the dining room. 

My brain flipped at light speed between anger, offence, and discombobulation, and settled on amusement.

“Well, you see,” it was explained, “B isn’t used to sleeping in with his parents, so he decides not to sleep.  So he’s got the bathroom.  And that means –”

And so it came to pass.  I won’t go through the musical bedroom convolutions which led to this inexorable outcome, but actually I got a good deal, because Boybaby apparently wasn’t too satisfied with the bathroom either (at eight months you’re entitled to insist on consistency in your lifestyle, aren’t you?) and let this be known; I was several floors, walls and doors away and heard nothing of that.

He’s got a baby walker, and has learnt to do three-point turns, frowning at the nearest adult when a doorway or a chair or something gets in the way, complaining in the language he’s rapidly inventing, and smiling thanks when you sort out the problem for him.  I’d thought he was going to skip the crawling bit and go straight to walking, but I subsequently revised this to ‘straight to driving’.

 

 So Boybaby was my Christmas joy.  Oh, there was a lot of other stuff, of course – drink, food, presents, games, silliness, drink, food, silliness, songs, all as usual but different – I won’t bore you with even the bits I can remember.  For now.