Escaping the tower of terror (aka home!) by 930am, no mean feat! There's a wonderful app called the Wonder weeks (see what I did there! Total mum brain, alliteration is all I can handle right now). It nudges at when your baby/ toddler will be going through fantastical changes, times of great learning and skill mastering, it's precious, it's seminal... it's exhausting! As an adult I can possibly remember as far back as learning to ride a bike or to swim (sans armbands- big day! Loved that holiday swimming pool). I definitely do not recall learning to roll over, mastering how my hands can do more than startle into action (quite to my own surprise) or even forming useful shapes with my lips and tongue to verbalise my needs (mostly to just have a natter I've learnt!) So, it's no surprise that when crafting these basic, evolutionary movements, we are all totally grumpy buggers! Bb (baby boy- I'm slowly learning the short hand from much sought mum forums) is 5 months old, and he's in a "leap", a developmental leap, a Wonder weeks leap. Something about learning that things can be far or near, and in or out, and so on. A great knowledge to have when stacking blocks (and knocking them down) or playing peek-a-boo (side note: 5 ish months is a lot of fun for this game alone). It is not so much fun when you (the parent) want to: make some breakfast (more than the standard chocoate left in strategic lap-napping spots around the house), or to brush your teeth or get dressed. Even though we've placed bouncy chairs and walkers in the bathroom and kitchen/ diner we find Bb wants to be anywhere but away from a tight wrap into my or my partners body. The app gives a chart of sunshine and storm cloud emojis, marking out babies mood during, and out of a leap. Whilst tiny, the timings are incredibly accurate, and they become more loosely based and variable as the child gets older. So you come to rely on the "sunny," phases as a week or two where you know that you'll be eating three meals a day, batch cooking for the month ahead, and feeling reasonably energised (despite the still frequent night wakings). However, the most recent one ended, a particularly long and gruelling thirty nine days, and I thought to myself, "time to breathe." But, in fact, he remained grumpy. All until the last two days of the sunny vacation. And now we are at the summit of the next one, gradually descending the rocky outlook and glimpsing the trickling, fresh- water springs of hope! You would think I have learnt not to trust the app, due to its inaccuracy (how dare it not fit every, single, baby in existence exactly!) However, I've become painfully dependent upon those sunny emojis, awaiting their presence on my phone screen like awaiting an important exam result: part of me doesn't want to know, but a bigger part of me wants the dawn chorus to illuinate right on cue, as the sun rises, heralding a productive week or two amongst the time warp of early parenthood.
