back in its box

Well. Apologies for the extended delay, it appears that we hadn’t had all the viruses in existence as of my last post however, while I’m certain that there are gazillions more out there in the world, I’m now fairly certain that we’ve had all the ones on our street.

The Spud is now asleep and snuffling gently to himself. I hesitate to use the correct words to describe what he’s doing at the moment because it’s so hard to reconcile the term ‘snoring like a Harley in a hailstorm’ with my little spud. See cute pic at bottom of last post for reference.

He’s charting at 98.6% on all three official scales, height, weight and cuteness. For such an enormous potato he really is still just a little, little thing and watching him be ill has been tough on the old motherly love brain. Still, there are all the moments in between to feed off, such as, for example, the time he met his Uncle Hoto for the second time.

The first time, last Christmas, Uncle Hoto spent a lot of time trying to teach my little tadpole to say his name. This time, it was much the same. On the fallacious theory that ‘Hoto’ is easier to say than, for example, the Spud’s other uncle’s names, my brother spent most of his time here (when he wasn’t throwing up) singing nursery rhymes with all the lyrics surgically removed and replaced with the word ‘Hoto’. Over and over and over. No matter that one of the Frog’s brothers is call ‘Didier’, a sound which comes out of the spud’s mouth approximately a hundred times a day, Hoto Will Have His Way. Perhaps. To ensure that outcome, this time he came complete with large head-shots with the caption ‘Uncle Hoto’ on them.

The spud for his part loves his Uncle Hoto, who is happy to spend serious time making faces and fart noises at him and Hoto’s quest to be favourite Uncle is surely on it’s way to success.

I think he’s missing the main point here though. Considering that both my brother and my husband are manic clean freaks, it’s not Hoto’s name that the spud is in terrifying danger of repeating at the tender age of 1. Aged 2, my brother burst into tears on being given an ice-cream cone because it made his hands sticky. He wouldn’t play in the mud or the sand and would freak out if things weren’t sort of in order. Aged 17 he moved away to music college and sent me a photo diary of his digs in a state of pig-sty disarray. He didn’t actually have to tell me that he’d staged the whole thing, by that point I’d spent 15 years in the same house as him and I had nearly as much fun imagining him neurotically washing his dishes after the photo-shoot as I did looking at the pictures.

The Frog, on the other hand, brings the whole business to a completely new level. I can send him into total melt-down simply by moving the furniture in the living-room an inch out of place. A dark smudge on a white wall will have him scrubbing away the day’s disappointments until a satisfying expanse of clean paint is revealed. Hours of fun!

So, you see. Two of the Spud’s closest male relatives and role models are, shall we say, a trifle fastidious and to date there is every sign that my snotty bear is going to be following in their footsteps - if one could see their footsteps, that is, after all that polish.

I present as evidence his loathing for the feel of a dirty nappy; his look of distaste as he obsessively opens and closes his sticky hands at me waiting for the wash-cloth and his need to wipe his nose and mouth on my trousers or shoulder, whichever is closest in a crisis. I had been hoping that that badge of motherhood, the shoulder of baby sick, would have disappeared by now however it is not to be as I now bear epaulettes of dinner, boogers and spit on a regular basis.

I know that this is a good thing, that having a son who actually wants to clean his room will be a blessing in my old age. I love that he looks like a cross between his Dad and his Uncle Hoto. I’m thrilled that he takes after them both so much – however while sitting in his room covered in his lunch and trying to build a tower out of wooden bricks while he took each one and obsessively put it back into it’s bag, I rather wished my darling men-folk could be a little more random and, er, scruffy once in a while.

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