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Dear Frankie, Month 3
Dear Frankie,
Friday just gone you became 1/4 year old, by Jove. Yeah cuteness this and yeah beautiful that. Yesterday your mother cooked us a great roast pork and we really could have substituted that meat by popping you in that oven instead, you’re so edible. Crikey me, you overwhelm us. You’re vital stats as they stand:
Height: 61cms
Weight: 5.58kg
Eye colour: Prussian blue
Hair colour: Brown waning to light brown
Smile: Killer
I’m so sorry to have to let you know this but we’re getting a lot of people tell us that you look very much like me. What, that vacant, slightly podgy look? And insult to injury: there’s a chance you’ve inherited my left-handedness. Over the past month you’ve been learning to locate your mouth, so you’re spending less time poking yourself in the eye and more time hitting the jackpot with your left thumb. But maybe you’re cack-ambidextrous-handed though because I just got off the phone to your Ma who said that you were lying on the bed with both thumbs in your mouth.
In fact, you’re becoming more orally fixated as the days roll on. You’re going to have to learn that when we go to kiss you, it’s wrong to try and slip your tongue in my or Mummy’s mouth. In a similar trend and following on from your regular puking on us, the other day as we were getting into the bath you treated me to a golden shower. Now, I love you Frankie, just not in that way.
Since I last wrote, your first Christmas and New Year’s have come and gone. You slept most of the way through xmas day, coincidentally falling asleep soon after I’d fed you a finger-tip of champagne. New Year’s was spent with your cheggers Auntie Em and Uncle Neil down in Brighthelmstone. We’re very excited about Emmah’s news, you’ll (your imminent cousin and you) even be in the same academic year. It’s just a shame their littl’n won’t be in the higher streamed sets with you.
Last weekend we journeyed over to Cheltenham introduce you to your first suitor, the robust and rather gentlemanly Finn Harrison. You also met your Great Grandma who told you that “this would probably be the only time we’d meet”, which was cheery.
Leaving to go to work continues to be the worst part of my day. Especially if you’re lying there post-feed wrapped up on Mummy, is not easy. When you wake up, you’ll normally have a good stretch then roll into a ball just like a woodlouse protecting herself. Your waking day is mainly spent observing and drooling. And the amount you dribble now has become a bit torrential so your chin, neck and vest are constantly damp. You’re not far off being too big for your moses-like basket and there’s already a bag of your cast-off clothes. Sometimes you look more like a little lady now and less of a baby.
Night times after you’ve just been laid down, your beautiful mother and I will lie in bed, biting our fists to stifle the giggles. Your legs are up at right angles so we can see only them above the parapet of your pit whilst you slurp, suck, blurt and fart away. Last night I read you a story about a rabbit, a cat and a dog. I thought you’d appreciate me doing impressions of the sounds they make. I’m sorry that I made you jump so that you starting crying when I barked like the dog. Naughty doggy.
Everyone remarks upon your electric hairdo and then how easygoing, quiet and well-behaved you are. But you are Frankie, you’ve really hit the nail on the head. Surely babies aren’t supposed to be this good.
All the love,
Daddy x
Spinning Baby
Someone call the social services.
Dear Frankie, Month 2
Dear Frankie,
The day before yesterday you turned 1,464 hours or 61 days old, or as we say on planet earth: 2 months old. You’re 55cms long and you weigh 5.1Kg. You’re quite the unit.
On Sat 24th November we registered your birth at Camden Town Hall, Judd St opposite the recently reopened St.Pancras Station. The registrar asked us what our occupations were to put on the birth certificate, no proof required. The funniest thing we could come up with was ‘farmer’ which really isn’t that funny. We had a few minutes to check the details over and clocked the unfunniness so ‘Charity Worker’ and ‘IT Consultant’ are the titles that you can proudly declare your parents had at the time of your birth. Had your mother or father actually been quick-witted, our answers would have been ‘Circus Ringmaster’ or ‘Brain Surgeon’ or maybe something funny instead. So the registration took place despite your Grandfather’s anti-establishment protestations to keep you out of reach from the powers that be. I imagine that before long he’ll be explaining to you the importance of staying off the authorities’ radar, and how oppressive it is for governments to entrap people within the confines of numbers and databases. He comes out with hilarious subversive stuff like that all the time. Humour him.
On Saturday the 1st December, Ma took me out for the first half of my birthday pressie. Only to the rather opulent Waterside Inn at Bray, my life. This was our first evening away from you. Your slightly more sensible set of Grandparents babysat for the evening and Ma and I had a great time. Yes, without you. Poor old Frankiepoos, missing out on such luxuries. Wo is. But really though, it was blimmin lovely. The waiters were perfectly orchestrated, perfectly attentive, perfectly timed, the food was tremendous – a crab bisque, roast duck and too many pudding morsels. I want to go back already. Maybe the next time it’ll be with you, when you’d ask for more than milk.
My birthday itself the weekend after was our second evening away from you, and this time overnight. Ma whisked me away to an undisclosable (ok, it was The Royal Lancaster Hotel on the edge of Hyde Park) – again, how spoilt am I! GrandDaddy and Auntie Aly took the babysitting reins over you at home in Bow. This time we ate some great Japanese at Feng Sushi in Notting Hill, and we were only sat next to Annie Bloody Lennox. Anyway, say thank you to your first pair of babysitters when you can please darling.
Then we had visitors from Cambridge, Mary and Tim came down to meet you and naturally you looked your beautiful angelic self; kept fairly quiet; generally behaved as good as gold, as normal. Keep up the good work girl. We also had our first Thanksgiving together thanks to your Aunty Amber and Uncle Edd. Really good meal, personally I wouldn’t have used cinnamon amongst a roast dinner though. But we gave thanks for you, to who I’m not quite sure, but we clinked our booze to your name.
Last Wednesday the 12th we went along to the HAC carols evening which as it does every year culminates in those well-known yuletide tunes ‘Jerusalem’ and ‘Land of Hope and Glory’. I know that then and any time I’m out in public with you, I can’t help but give off laserbeams of pride. You’re so cool Frankie.
A couple of weeks ago you had your first cold, which for our benefit entailed some power sneezes and a morning nasal situation that looked like you’d been up all night snorting pulped lime. Imagine someone sneezing full on in your face, you being the sneezer, me the sneezee. Woahh – thanks for that daughter, nice one. In addition to this and your weird spottiness from last month, you’ve also gone and had Cradle Cap for the past few weeks, or ‘druff’ as I like to call it. And dryness around your brow area, but we make sure we oil it up before we present you to any unsuspecting onlookers. So that’s been nice.
The most annoying thing you have to deal with at the moment occurs at times when you’re at your cutest, normally lying down looking up, surveying our world and Mummy and I are just overcome with love and awe for this cuteness so we kiss either side of your fat cheeks alternately for about a minute nonstop, until you just look at us with some kind of “What are you guys doing with me?” expression. “NOW GET OFF!”.
Some observations: You have the most perfect almond shaped eyes, the most morbidly obese jowels and chubby double chin. In fact the chin area is so gratuitously podgy that often, you’ll use it as a chin-rest to comfort your weary head upon. If you lie on your side, your boobs heave together so that you already have a cleavage. When you smile and when you cry hard, you have this little dimple on one side of your mouth. I do hope it stays. You’re becoming more and more aware of your surrounds every day. You’re starting to become more vocal, making some very girly and lovely ‘oohs’ and aahs’. You entreat us with epic, manly farts. You’re generally a very well behaved little monkey, but if you do get grizzly in the night, I sometimes take you for a walk to the lounge to go and see The Big Building, that monolith of a high-rise estate that we live in the shadow of, and of course this seems to calm you right down into a state of hypnosis. You beautiful freak.
I love you baby,
Daddy XOX