I Am That Dad

Another weapon in the arsenal  for any parent is the power of song. A soothing voice that when combined with your well established Rock is a very effective tool to get your child to go to sleep. For weeks now I have been singing Noah to sleep almost every night; the melody may change with each rendition and the words are almost always made up more or less spontaneously, usually describing how tired he is but often it can be about anything; what I've done today, what colour his sleepsuit is, how desperate I am for the toilet and so forth. I figured it wasn't important, its not like he can understand me anyway is it? So I've sung nursery rhymes, The Beatles or The Rolling Stones and other great classic ballads, even the song my parents used to sing to me which I demanded every night for years and sometimes on loop (The Cuckoo by Pentangle if you're interested). But for Noah, nothing works quite as well as Kung Fu Fighting by Carl Douglas. ...

As a parent you quickly develop a rock. Your rock is powerful, it is your main line of defence in the soothing of your child. Your rock is good. No I am not referring to the follically challenged Quo, with their power chords and endless rewrites of what appears to be the same song, or any other rock band for that matter. I am of course talking about the rocking motion employed to calm your baby, to encourage sleep and the cessation of tears. After five and a half months I do it without thinking now, in fact it has become my default stance, so much so that this morning I found myself queueing in the supermarket, waiting to buy my breakfast banana, swaying from foot to foot. Of course having no baby in my arms just makes me look a little bit mental, made worse because its a cold November morning and I am wearing what Nikala affectionately refers to as my "murderer's coat" and "rapist's gloves".

This week my mother has been to stay and apart from providing Nikala with some much needed grownup company, its been lovely for Noah to be able to spend some time with his Grandma, especially as this week Noah decided it was time to up the ante and do something new. Nikala and I have been feeling like somewhat neglectful parents recently as we haven't been giving Noah enough "tummy-time", you know so that he learns to crawl and stuff instead of just lying on his face lightly suffocating on the playmat. The thing is he hates it on his front, probably because of the aforementioned face meeting floor, and we just can't bear to see him cry and pick him up straight away. Well that has all changed in a day. In the way that only Grandmas can, my mum spent all day playing with him on his front and upon my return from work they had something to show me. In an excited hush we all got down on the floor and gathered around Noah as he was placed face down on his playm...