Pass the Pimms, Mater...

There's no accounting for babies' tastebuds. After a tummy bug our baby refused everything except yoghurt and fruit for about a month. Then (especially when he saw a slightly older baby eating new things) he got interested in more variety again. But it's no good making him 'baby-friendly' things like simple tomato sauce with teeny tiny pasta or peanut-butter sandwiches - which apparently are the favourite food of half the babies I know - no, he has higher aspirations, like -

Strawberries - I first gave him a tiny mashed up bit with some cream from an Eton Mess I was eating. Now he wolfs them down, biting them savagely and managing to get through eight large ones in one day. And the other favourite is -

Smoked salmon. No good giving him simple plain salmon, nicely cooked up a la baby cooking expert Annabel Karmel, no, he wants smoked salmon, which he'll eat and eat and eat. I'm sure this makes me a Bad Mother - the salt! the uncooked fish! but he loves it so, you know....

Meanwhile the baby rice and baby porridge and baby pasta are sitting untouched on the shelf. Given these fancy new tastebuds he's developing I've been thinking what else I could offer him. Champagne in his bottle? Pimms in his drinking cup? Canapes topped with caviar after a hard day at the childminder's? All I can surmise is he likes quite strong tastes and interesting textures. So I'm off to look round the supermarket and in my cookery books for ideas. Squid pieces? Chorizo?  Tapas selection? Crispy duck in Chinese pancakes with plum sauce and spring onions? Who knows.

I can see you...

We spent two weeks at my mother and stepfather's farm with the baby and a change of scene brought lots of new leaps forward.

First of all, me and my husband went out for lunch, twice, without the baby - for the first time in 9 months. Admittedly, we spent most of our time out talking about how sweet our (absent) baby is - it's true what they say, absence does make the heart grow fonder. But to just be the two of us with no baby in tow was a novel feeling and very pleasant. As with our childminder, leaving the baby with someone else gives you confidence to do it again - nothing dreadful happens and really they have a pretty good time! We're setting up a babysitting club with our NCT group shortly (poker chips give you hours to trade) so we hope to make it a more regular occurrence.

Meanwhile, the baby learnt to 'see' animals. I often point out cats and dogs we come across round London but he used to blank them. A trip to the zoo resulted in the same treatment of giraffes - even though they were right there in front of him, towering several metres above us. But on the farm he met horses, donkeys, sheep, dogs and puppies, cats and kittens, chickens and chicks, ducks and ducklings. He did his best to avoid his toes being nibbled by the donkeys while the cats did their best to avoid being nibbled by him. Yesterday, sitting on our front step waiting for his Daddy to come home, a dog walked by on the other side of the road with its owner. "Dog" I said, as I've been doing for months. He stared at it, grinned broadly, and frantically tried to stand up so that he could watch it as it walked further away.

Another baby staying at the house, one month older, inspired him to try new things. She ate new things, he looked at her and ate them too. She could pull herself to standing via the furniture and he promptly headed for the furniture and tugged at it, trying to hoist himself up. She could crawl, and he redoubled his efforts. His foot still seems to get in the way and he has resorted to Commando-style crawling (arms only, dragging his legs behind him) to get where he wants to get to, but having a role model made a difference. A new baby is starting at our childminder's, who is just four months older, I think he will continue to provide inspiration for new adventures.

These experiences make sense. He saw things another baby could do, he had time to experience animals up close for a prolonged period and he spent time with his grandparents before he was left with them so he was comfortable with them, so none of these events are really surprising.

But while we were away we missed two swimming classes. One of the skills they are being taught is to 'hold on' to the side of the pool, a safety measure should they ever fall in. Before we left he would place his hands on the edge and hold on, but he had to have a knee under him to hold him up and he was doing nothing to support his own body in that position. The day after we flew back was swimming class. "Hold on" we said, and he gripped the side firmly, put his feet against the side of the pool and hoisted himself forward. The teacher told me to let go and there he was, holding onto the edge of the pool, head clear of the water, keeping himself safe all alone. I was astonished. I had expected him to perhaps not remember some of the exercises, even maybe to be a bit scared by the regular dunking underwater. But he had moved on leaps and bounds. The change of scene must have been building up some new pathways in his mind.

The spirit of a great granny

I consider myself fortunate to have a (to normal eyes) ludicrously extended family. We don't just have stepmothers and stepfathers - that's ordinary. We have relationships like 'my half sisters' half brother' and I once flummoxed my fellow students by telling them that for Christmas we would be at 'my stepmother's stepmother.' And so on. I have five siblings, all 'halves' whom I consider wholes. We have family get-togethers that would be unthinkable in other families, with two ex-wives, the current wife and all their offspring in the same room as my father, and everyone happy to be together.

What this requires, to make it work, is a generosity of spirit, and this was exemplified by my stepmother's mother, who was always very grandmotherly towards me. But she impressed me even more when my own baby was born. She took a surprisingly great interest in him. "I can see he's very intelligent", was her first remark on having seen an early photo of him, wrinkled and pink. I sent more photos and she rang me every time to say thank you. I would start normal conversations with her and she would stop me. "Tell me about the baby," she'd say and I would describe his swimming lessons, his fun in the doorway bouncer, about him learning to sit up. When she met him she focused all her attention on him and held him gently, her growing-frail arms tenderly wrapped about his not inconsiderable frame.

Tonight a candle burns on our table for a person who knew what it meant to be a real Great-Granny, and that blood ties had nothing to do with it.

Lift me up, please

It doesn't take long before a baby cottons on to how they can play you at your own game. We hold our arms out to our baby before we pick him up and he started to respond by lifting his own up towards us, a sort of acknowledgment that he was about to be picked up, which we thought was sweet. But now he has gone one step further. My husband was trying to tidy the room while the baby sat on the mat with toys. But he was getting bored and kept throwing away the toys and whinging. My husband, needing a few extra minutes to finish tidying, attempted to pacify him with offers of different toys. But the baby wasn't about to be fobbed off like that. Instead, he raised his arms up to my husband, clearly signaling wanting to be picked up. It's a small step, but a giant leap as it were, because once he's realised that, there are an awful lot more steps along that road. "I wonder what his voice will sound like?" said my husband one day. I think we're going to find out pretty soon, and after that it won't be silent signals, it'll be full on, loud requests that are a lot harder to ignore. Recently, walking along a busy road with my pram and fairly silent baby I came across two grandparents being held hostage by a toddler in a little red coat, who was crouched in a heap, screaming her head off about something while the two of them attempted to pacify her. I smiled sympathetically and the woman, seeing my small baby smiled back. "All still to come," she prophesied.
Can't wait.
Gulp.