After a 5 (plus 9ish) month sentence, Bianca was finally treated to a night out. Her prison officer Ted left with me and me alone. Sure I’ve spent lots of time with Ted before, but usually I have had the emergency button of “the boob” if things got out of hand.
Ted slept on the way to drop Bianca off, probably a good thing as it struck her that she was going to be Ted’less for the next few hours. I decided to kick off my good, responsible parenting immediately and drove home the long way to make sure that he slept for at least 30 minutes.
A weary Ted woke to finally realise that his mother wasn’t around. There was a weird 10 minutes where Ted was still a little sleepy, a little confused and quiet as he wondered why a) his dad was around on a week day and b) his mummy hadn’t come back.
Ashamedly, I settled with him on my lap and had a quick glance at work emails until Ted wrestled the iPhone from me and into his mouth. He was back in the room. The giggles started and he recommenced his quest to steal my glasses. Even as I type I struggle to see the screen through his grubby fingerprints over my specs.
The next 3 hours were brilliant. We laughed. He climbed me. He dribbled on me (lots). We played with his toys. He even played exceptionally patiently whilst I tried to work the steriliser and make his bottle without burning myself. I knew I’d taken too long and was feeling nervous when I heard a screech from the living room. My senses went on high alert, was Ted beginning to feel abandoned? Nope, he’d reached over, got a toy in his mouth and seemed to be laughing at Friends on the TV. As I rushed in, he stopped, smiled at me and then turned back towards the TV.
I think this summarised the whole thing. He absolutely bossed our afternoon together. He held the bottle I tried to feed him with. He reached for the toys he wanted to play with. He threw himself backwards when he wanted to play “row row row your boat”. And even rubbed his eyes 5 minutes before he was due his bath as if to say “I’m not sure you’re aware of the schedule, but I’d quite like my bath now”.
The sad thing is that once asleep, I couldn’t think of anything else to do but do some work. I keep looking at the monitor wondering if he’ll wake up wanting to play again. (he did wake up and he just wanted milk – but only at an acceptable temperature, so I had to make a second bottle)
I know that it would be incredibly difficult to do this all day every day as Bianca does so naturally (and excellently), but I felt privileged to have this special bit of father/son time. I hope he enjoyed it and that he’ll let me have another go – frankly, it’s his decision.
Here's a pic of my boss, commanding from his high chair
*****
Incidentally – how weird is this? I was trying to find the scene from 3 Men and a Baby where Tom Selleck stares blindly at the selection of nappies and formula in a supermarket, when I found this clip:
apparently a whole internet craze about a ghost boy in the film. I am freaking out.
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