kiss kiss bang bang

I picked up the spud from his minder yesterday and from the confines of his buggy he made a little kissing sound at me. He’s done this before, it was his party trick a few party tricks ago. As cute tricks go, it’s a good one, however when it comes to planting a proper smacker on the cheeks of a hopeful parental unit, his skill-set is limited to a damp, open gape lined with fresh, sharp baby ivories. This lands on one’s cheek fairly enthusiastically, however tends to leave a wet trail at best, bruises at worst. Frequently it is merely the prelude to a big juicy raspberry blown on one’s neck in invitation to a giggling, raspberry-blowing battle.

While all this jolliness is very sweet it does take rather an imaginative leap to translate into the belief that my little spudlet is actually bestowing affection upon his aged parent’s cheek. Things, however, appear to have changed.

I pushed him home in the damp, him singing loudly nearly all the way, a little song whose lyrics go something like ‘oooahh, oooahh, duguyduguyduguy AH! AH! AH! and which translates, I think into ‘I’m ok, I’m ok, here I come here I come here I come Look At Me Look At Me Look At ME! I pitched in occasionally, counter-pointing his chorus with some off-beat ‘AH’s just to spice things up a little. We arrived at home leaving a trail of bemused commuters in our wake and potentially a few love-lorn cats. I unbuckled him from his restraints safety belt, picked him up for a cuddle and he landed a perfect smacker on my cheek, complete with a little kissy sound and a pucker. He then proceeded to take my face in his hands and lean in for a second one on the other cheek. After I came down from my motherly-love cloud I thought, ‘My god, he really is French.’

Following this triumph he has been handing out kisses to everyone which I have to say is not helping his relationship with the cat who is only within reach in the hope that the Spud has spare food.

This isn’t his only party trick this week. He arrived home on Monday with some random paintings of, er, Blue… and some Green… which apparently he had done without any help at all and he was, his minder informs me, the only child in the nursery who consistently put the paint brushes back into the pots. Well, you can imagine how much my motherly-love brain puffed itself up and strutted about the room at that one. I practically laid an egg while I was passing this information along to the Frog I was so full up with it all. My child! MY child! Finally leading the pack in something that doesn’t have to do with his being big and strong but with him potentially actually being clever. OK, so it’s not pointing at a picture and correctly verbalising the word ‘crocodile’ but face it, Everything Counts.

The Frog, however, had news for me on this one.

A new Spuddy favourite is the slamming of doors which means swift investment in those foam rubber door stops that save little fingers from becoming little fleshy spatulas. It also means that nobody is safe on the loo as the slamming doors trick is only possible courtesy of his opening doors trick. He’s been able to reach the door handles for months and has been opening them successfully for weeks. Now, however he’s become obsessed with the whole process and every door must be opened and shut the minute it is spotted on his route through the house in the cat’s wake. One must therefore remember to lock oneself into the WC whenever anything of importance is happening in there or one is liable to find oneself with one’s knickers around one’s ankles, exposed to whomever is unfortunate enough to be visiting at the time. Not to mention being exposed to the spud who is very curious about the whole goings-on and intent on investigating the entire process. This is perhaps educational if one has decided not to mind, however the trouble is that while he is too little to imitate the core of the matter, he is keen to demonstrate his understanding of the peripherals, such as the pulling of the loo roll, the button that makes the water flush and, crucially, the brush one uses to clean things up with.

Being of a rather hygienic nature, shall we say, the Frog is a regular cleaner of loos. This involves regular use of the loo brush which is kept in it’s own pot by the commode. The brighter of you may now see where this is going. Apparently, for the past few weeks, the spud has been watching his father clean the loo in the morning and then imitating him. This involves taking the brush out of the pot, putting it into the loo and then trying to put it back into it’s pot again – and hopefully, then having his hands washed by his father. Ahem.

What this is, apart from a ‘4’ on the disgusting scale (are you ‘1’, not disgusted at all, ‘2’ mildly disgusted, ‘3’ fairly disgusted, ‘4’ very disgusted or ‘5’, completely disgusted?), is perfect practice for getting a skinny little paint-brush back into a wide-mouthed jam jar. It also explains the little scrubby brush marks limited to a small corner of the paper and rather takes the wind out of my puffed up feathers.

I guess this week I’ll just settle for the kissing and hope that next week the nursery can deliver a different triumph – perhaps something that involves slamming a door.

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