The Dodo's Demise

Holly: Daddy or chips?

Dylan: Chips!

I’m washing up while Dylan watches Peppa Pig in the study. He runs through kitchen, waving my wallet and grinning mischievously. A few seconds later he runs back, only this time he’s waving my joint account card. I call after him, telling him to put it back. Later, when I go to the study, the wallet is on the desk and the card is in the wallet. My little boy is learning to put things away. Now it’s just a matter of waiting for our joint account statement to see what he bought.

We’ve removed the stair gate from the bottom of the stairs and I’ve taken the side off Dylan’s cot. He’s growing up and I couldn’t be prouder. Unfortunately, the cot thing unsettles him and it’s like he’s regressed eighteen months. Night after night, he cries for half an hour when we put him down and he’s started waking (us) up every hour from 3am onwards. A week later I’m walking around like a zombie. This is when I conceive The Dummy Plan.

Dylan calls dummies ‘dodos’, which seems oddly fitting as their medium term future is extinction. Different families approach the challenge in a number of ways: dummies sent to less fortunate children in third world countries; dummies collected by the Dummy Fairy; dummies literally handed to the bin men. When the time comes, Dylan’s dummies are going to be abducted by aliens. In the meantime, I’ve been thinking about how to make the separation easier. It shouldn’t be difficult: the only time he has a dummy is when he’s settling down for bed and while he’s in bed. My plan is to remove the dummy from the settling down stage. If he grows accustomed to mummy or daddy fetching it for him after he’s in bed then hopefully he’ll fall asleep without it. It looks pretty reasonable on paper but it isn’t working yet. Every night we put Dylan to bed with him chanting ‘Dodo, dodo, dodo,’ as we carry him up the stairs. Then there’s the crying, then there’s the cheering, then there’s the not sleeping.

We’ve been enjoying the strawberries from the garden whenever I can pick the ripe ones before the slugs eat them. They aren’t the largest strawberries in the world, and there aren’t many of them, but I’d rather have one of mine than a crate from the supermarket. I just wish Dylan had tasted mine first, he might like strawberries.

The garden is full of dead slugs and new corpses keep arriving every day. I think we’re winning when Mother Nature shows her hand. I come down in the morning and the grow rack has disappeared behind the shed. Dylan’s sunflower has been flattened, as have my seedlings, and one of my courgettes has been uprooted. High winds and hard rain prove devastating for a working garden.

It’s been another busy month. I’ve recorded solo acoustic demos of three of my songs and I’m hoping to take a band into the studio later this summer to follow up on Americana. I’ve played a gig at The Bristol Fringe, accompanied by the wonderfully talented Ant Noel on piano, vocals and harmonica. By the end of the month I hope to have finished the project part of my diploma as well as submitting entries for the 50 Kisses script-writing competition, the Flash 500 flash fiction competition and the V. S. Pritchett Prize. Sadly I don’t have tickets for Carrie Underwood’s concert at the Royal Albert Hall tomorrow, but I’m going to see Springsteen in Manchester on Friday and I’m playing two gigs on Saturday with another talented friend, Howard Sinclair, on guitar and vocals. I’ve also had the fire brigade around to check our smoke alarms, a tree surgeon friend around to give our garden a much-needed haircut, and I’m trying to get someone out to look at our double glazing. Oh, and I’m organising Dylan’s second birthday party.

Dylan’s vocabulary is expanding all the time. He says ‘tick tock’ for clock, ‘choo choo’ for trains, and ‘tweet tweet’ for birds. One day he’s going to ask us why we didn’t teach him the right names for things and I don’t have a good answer yet. Hopefully he’ll ask the question about babies first.

This morning, Dylan was looking at my fox photos on Holly's iPad. He was so excited, I thought I'd show him the real thing, so we snuck up to his bedroom and watched two cubs enjoying the early morning sunshine. Dylan stuck his head out of the window and shouted 'Fox!' at the top of his voice. It's great he knows the word for fox, it's just a shame it sounds so rude the way he says it. In some places, the sight of fox cubs playing might be considered a novelty. Here, the main attraction is a twenty-three month old shouting obscenities from his bedroom window.

'Fox!'

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Three Weeks In

At the aquarium, I ask Dylan what noise sharks make and he says 'Meow.' I tell him I think it's more 'Grrr' and the attendant looks at me as if I'm barking. Maybe she's right.

So this is it, the honeymoon period is over. We're back from the cruise and Holly has started her new job, which means I'm in charge at home. It's you and me baby, and one of us is having his nappy changed.

Not everything is going according to plan. Dylan is supposed to be in nursery one day a week and with his grandma two days a week, so I have time to do housework, shopping, studying and writing. In three weeks I should have had nine days without him but, for a number of reasons, it's actually been six, and the average is going to worsen over the next fortnight. It's not enough.

We've been busy. We've been to the Brighton Sea Life Centre for a friend's wedding and to Weybridge for a birthday party in a gym; we've had friends to stay and Holly's been to Manchester for a three day induction course; I've played a gig, entered the Bridport Prize short story competition and passed the first part of my Diploma; and last Saturday I spent the day wearing a high-vis jacket in our local park, helping out with the Jubilee celebrations. I don't think I've ever been so tired.

We've been ill. Dylan shook off his cruise fever with no sign of chicken pox, but a week later I had a similar fever and Dylan cared for me by hitting me in the face with his toys. A week later he had a temperature again, followed by three days of acute diarrhoea (at one point he napalmed the bathroom and I had to wash everything I was wearing) and a mild cold that might have been hay fever.

And the slugs are still eating my garden. For a time, back in sunny spring, everything was growing beautifully and pests were few and far between. As the strawberries turned red and we ate the first slender pickings of rocket and radish, I honestly thought we were through the worst of it, so I planted more seeds and transplanted the tomatoes, courgettes and cabbages. Some mornings I was out early enough to see the fox clubs playing in our neighbour's garden. Then rain announced the arrival of summer and it's all gone to hell. Slugs and snails have eaten my rocket and cabbages, two of my courgette plants and all the ripe strawberries. Everything else has been nibbled or slimed. It's time to use pellets.

But we're eating well. I've discovered slow cooking, which means I can put the food on while Dylan's having his nap and it's ready to eat by the time he goes to bed at night. Throw in some crunchy salad and crusty bread and it's a meal. We've had chicken and lentil curry, Irish carbonade, and a chicken and barley supper, and on each occasion I've made enough so I can freeze a couple of portions. It's not quite as cost effective as roasting a chicken but it's pretty reasonable.

Dylan's growing up in all kinds of ways. He rarely drops stuff on the floor anymore, he cooperates when I need to change his nappy and last week he didn't cry when I took him to nursery. Every week we go to playgroup, soft play and the library, and when we're at home he helps me tend to the garden. We also go swimming regularly and since the cruise he can more or less make his way around the pool on his own. In the next few days I'm going to take the side off his cot and he'll have his first sleep in a bed. It's a big deal for a little boy.

I've been invited to play a short set at a beer festival later this month and I've been looking for some new songs to cover. On the way home from the swimming pool I sing along with Chris Cagle's What Kinda Gone and think yes! This is the one! Then I turn around to reverse park on my drive and Dylan's in the baby seat with his fingers in his ears.

He loves his daddy, I'm sure, but it doesn't mean he's a fan.

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