Ani

I am proud to announce that our second daughter, Ani Fflur* was born on Friday 19th August at 1.30am.

She is beautiful and she is big. 9lb 12oz at birth to be precise. So big in fact that she could not be delivered in the normal manner. She was born by cesarian.

Its a bit being like ordering a sofa, only to find upon delivery that it's too large for the front door. There's a lot of humming and harring; huffing, puffing and head scratching. Finally, after a protracted struggle you realise that the front window will have to come out.

The Lady in her usual insurpressable manner is back home, running back and forwards, dancing with our one-year-old in the kitchen and vacuuming the floors, the walls, the celling and my face.**

Being a big baby, Ani is very settled. She is feeding well. In fact that is all she is doing: feeding.

This has caused me to ponder, "What would it be like to have an obese kid?" I mean, I'm not exactly svelte myself. I've put on a fair bit of pork since I heard the words, "Jake, I think I might be pregnant," and faced up to fact that I could no longer live my life in the manner of Keith Richards on a stag weekend.

But a big fat kid?

You do see them, don't you? Fat families. Pastie munching parents in wide corduroys, making lightsabre noises with their thighs; their arses - a strange undefined entity between their back-fat and leg-spread - gently swaying in the breeze; with junior in tow, pounding the pavements with his fat feet: a needy whine emanating from his chocolate stained gob, reiterating the fact that his brittle, under-exercised ankles are simply not up to the job carrying his gallumphing heft the full distance to the sweet shop. Come on, its bad enough a child having to grow up with the stigma of a massive dad and a fatty mum without force-feeding the bugger so he grows toffee-tits by the age of ten.

The other angle, I suppose, is the bloater amongst the sticklebacks. The fat kid in the thin family. How embarrassing would that be? "I'd like to introduce you to my daughter, Mary. Unfortunately, she is too fat and hideous to be seen in public, so instead I have brought a marionette of Chancellor Schroder to the christening. Look, I can make him dance..."

Yes, I know, I've been a bit cruel to the fatties. If we all become hideously distended and wobbly-boated in the future I probably deserve all I get. Who knows, next time I move house I might have have to remove the window just to get the bloody kids in.

One thing is for certain though, big or small, fat or thin, there's nothing like looking at your new-born daughter fast asleep in you arms and just trying to imagine just who that person will be.

Promise. Hope.

All just magical.

*Pronounced Annie Flee-ur. Fflur is the old Welsh word for flower.

** Well, I was foolish enough to eat musli.

Swept Up

Still no sign of the new baby.

Christ on a bike! What the hell do you have to do to get a birth around these parts?

Its six days overdue now.

This wouldn't be an issue if the lady's nesting instinct wasn't in overdrive. She's fastidious at the best of times. But now. Oh, heaven help us.. Carpets are being beaten. Wooden floors have been vacuumed, swept and mopped until the varnish has all but dissapeared. The brushed-steel stove is now smooth and shiny. Both myself and our daughter are covered in a thick crust of polish. Somebody stop her!

A kick up the arse

I haven't posted for a while. For two reasons really.

1) I've been running an acting summer school.

2) We are expecting the birth of our second child any minute now.

The summer school is now over. It has been quite nice I have to say, working full time for a bit. Leaving in the morning with the baby crying after me. Returning at night to a whoop of delight and a big smile. When I'm at home with the baby all day I often suspect that she is getting a bit bored of me. My repertoire of songs, games and visual gags is running a bit thin. There's only so many times that you can jump from behind the couch with a tea-cosy on your head blowing a raspberry and be entertaining*.

I've started to wonder is there a script writer who works in the field of baby jokes? There must be a market there. £40 for a selection of brand new visual gags and fresh animal noises** - I'd buy it.

Sometimes I think she regards me with an air of weary resignation. I feel like a bit of emotional furniture that she just always expects to be around. Leaving now and then makes me special again.

But now we are all here. At home. Sitting, waiting for something to happen. The baby is now over-due by four days, which isn't long I know, but its incredibly frustrating. We have tried everything: curries, riding over the speed-bumps at full tilt, cumin tea, raspberry leaf tea, sex, pineapple, blue cohosh, caulophylum, sex, black cohosh, kerb-walking, absailing, sex, bungy-jumping, sex, whitewater rafting with pineapple, the application of woad, chanting, burning sacred cow dung and sex with pineapples.

The two things that she has ruled out are:

1) "the administration of castor oil" (hooray - who needs a pooey pregnant lass hogging the bog all night)

and

2) "the oral application of semen" (boo)

I've got rehearsals starting again next week for a play that goes on stage in mid september, so I'm not ruling out a swift kick up the arse. At the weekend perhaps. When she's not looking.

Oh don't tut. You know I wouldn't really.

I'm nice, me.

Just ask the baby

Preferably when I'm out***


* From a baby's point of view - 1031 times before it stops being amusing.
From an adult point of view - after the third time you lose the will to live.

** I've been quite successful at teaching her animal noises. Too successful perhaps. Her monkey noises are startlingly good. Her human language skills don't come close to her monkey-speak. If things don't reverse soon, we will have to sell her to a circus.

*** And only if you can understand monkey.