Monday 14 May 2012

The Next Age of Baby

When a child is born, there is little to their personality beyond hunger and uncomfortable feelings in the bowels. For the first weeks of their lives you are doing little more than simply keeping them alive.
As they start to grow, they start to come out of their shell, if you'll forgive the rather poor analogy. They recognise faces, they start to smile and then laugh. They begin to move around under their own efforts and start to understand that there's a whole world of experience out there that goes beyond milk and nappies.
There is an age of enlightenment. The dawning realisation that for every action there is a consequence, everything that they do will impact on someone somewhere in a good or bad way depending on what it is they have just done. This, if you ask me, is the start of a conscience in a small child.
Joseph's not quite that far along yet. The age of enlightenment for him I fear is still some way away, although we are getting closer. No, Joseph is still very much a selfish little being, all his emotions are directed towards making himself feel better. It matters not to him what the consequences are, I doubt he is at all aware that there will ever be any. All he cares about is that there's something interesting going on in the kitchen and he wants to know what. The interesting activity was in fact me getting things in and out of the oven, a rather hot environment which we all know would have devastating consequences if a small child put himself in the wrong place. By the way he was howling every time I turned him round and escorted him from the kitchen the terrible consequences might have already happened.
By the way, I can't just shut the door on him any more. He stands outside and screams for a bit and then remembers that he knows how to open the door anyway.
Today was another step on the pathway towards self understanding. He knows what he wants know and generally speaking, wont stop till he gets it. This was evident with the kitchen routine and at dinner time when every spoonful I gave him was rapidly spat out. It was cous-cous and I felt as if I was under siege from some sort of human cannon using grape shot.
He wanted the spoon. As soon as he had the spoon he was happy. I did give a little assistance getting the food on the spoon and directing it, but the food was now being eaten and not orally machine gunned across the room. I decided that two spoons were better than one and fed him myself which was fine as long as he had his own spoon. Very little of the dinner made it into his mouth under his own direction, but I think it was the principle of the thing that mattered. Hey ho, now I can only give him foods that are safe for him to try and self feed with a spoon, no more tomato or carrot based foods for you young man.

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