Learning How To Walk

"Don't walk behind me, I may not lead. Don't walk in front of me, I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend."
Unknown, (often attributed to Albert Camus)

Cate learnt to "walk" whilst being supported by her wrists before she could crawl. After taking a few steps she would then start jumping. She clearly loved to jump. Cate's diary for Friday 19 May 2006 states "Cate joined in with lots of singing and 'Bouncing'!" Great fun, but it added nothing to her mobility.

Six days later 'bouncing' became 'dancing' so, in the words of Meat Loaf (well Jim Steinman), Cate had learned to dance before she'd learned to crawl; although crawling shortly followed: diary entry 30 June: "Cate crawled under it [the water sprinkler] and wasn't sure what to [do] next."

Dancing led to increased mobility: "We did some dancing today so she pulled herself up and down holding on to the side." (Thursday 6 July) Followed by "Cate has been walking along holding onto the wall, she walked quite a long way doing this and was doing it all day. Maybe she will soon show us her real steps at nursery?!!" (Friday 28 July) This was exciting news, although we both hoped that Cate's first steps would be at home in front of us, not at the nursery.

In August Cate started letting go of all support and then taking a few quick steps before collapsing. This 'controlled falling' was described in her diary entry of Friday 18 August "Cate took 4 steps on her own which took us all by surprise."

Douglas Adams once wrote that you can learn to fly by throwing yourself at the ground and missing. In late August Cate let go of the chinchilla cage took a few steps and then just stood there not falling over and looking at me trying to catch her. It was the start of the longest journey.

First Words

When I was a boy I asked my father: "if apes can't go to heaven, but men can, at what point does the ape evolve into an animal with an afterlife?"

He answered me with a question: "how many hairs need to be on a man's chin before he has a beard?"

He may as well have asked "at what point did your daughter say her first words?"

Cate goes to nursery three days a week and the staff keep a basic journal of what she did that day. On 1st February 2006 the entry includes the description "very vocal"; nine days later there was "alot of shouting most of which was mama and dada (so cute)." This was true up to a point, but neither "mama" nor "dada" was exclusively directly at either myself or my wife. What sounded like words were really just indeterminate babblings.

It was a few months after this that she started saying "ah-oh" just before she dropped something. Does this count as a first word? I doubt even the most magnanimous scrabble player would accept it as such. It wasn't until early September, on a trip to Italy, that I can remember Cate pointing at a dandelion and saying "flower". I would say that this was her first word.

Inevitably my wife disagrees! She says that this was just her first identifiable noun!

Learning How To Crawl

"When you can't walk, you crawl and when you can't do that, you find someone to carry you." - From The Message episode of Firefly

For the first six months of her life Cate would always be where you left her. This changed when she was 7 months old, whilst spending her first Christmas in Canada. I did not witness her first crawling movements, I just came back into the room to find her in a different place.

I started marking the carpet where her feet and head lay just to be sure she had achieved independent movement. With her arms and legs all moving without co-ordination any actual movement was a happy accident rather than anything deliberate. In fact moving backwords was Cate's forte; that and crying until someone carried her.

Ice Cold in Winnipeg

It is important to both myself and my wife that Cate grows up knowing about her Canadian roots. So we gave her a true Canadian experience by taking her out to downtown Winnipeg in January. To an Englishman unaware of the facts, there seemed nothing unusual about this. To an Englishman aware of the facts it seemed like child abuse. The temperature was -25 celsius.

I had never been out in such a climate and it seemed crazy to take my 7 month old daughter for a joint first time experience. However, my Winnipegger wife assured me that with no wind it would be OK. One of the problems facing Captain Scott was sweating in such cold temperatures and as I shoved my baby's pushchair through the urban snowdrifts I could identify with this. Cate remained snug and warm and totally unperturbed by the whole ordeal.

Out of the three of us, only I thought that our trip down to the shops was an adventure. Remind me who the kid is?

The Strength Of Family

Alvin ... tells her how he asked them to break one stick, "and of course they could," but, when he bound a number of sticks together and asked the children to break them as a bundle, they were unable to do so. That's family.
From the film "The Straight Story"

At my Dad's 61st birthday my family met my girlfriend, who was to become my wife, for the first time. She was the focus of attention, even when Dad was unwrapping presents she was answering questions about children.

When Cate was only a few weeks old we took her over to my parents' house. With the exception of Morrisons and Mothercare, it was only the third place that Cate had been following the hospital and our home. The family grapevine advertised the event and instead of a quiet visit our daughter met a menagerie of uncles and aunts. Cate was passed from relative to relative and the inevitable debate of which of her features came from which parent ensued. She started sounding less like a daughter and more like Frankenstein's monster.

It was a fitting welcome from the clan to the next generation and heartening to know that there are so many people that Cate will be able to rely on in the future.

First Feeds

New born eyes always cry with pain
At the first look at the morning sun
Fool (if you think it's over) - Chris Rea

Babies are badly designed. Can you imagine how long one would last in the wild compared to other new borns from the animal kingdom? They can't crawl, let alone walk and not only do they have no teeth, the whole feeding thing is a huge struggle.

In her first week Cate was almost put on a drip because she refused to feed, and she brought this attitude home with her from hospital. I could understand her reluctance. Whoever said: "you can't take out more than you put in", had never seen a baby vomit. Even when the milk stayed down her windy cries caused her such pain that it was easy to understand her happy burblings when the milk did come back up. Fortunately at that age I could rest her tummy on my shoulder and pat her on the back without her cries perforating my ear drums.

Gaviscon oh Gaviscon (as I believe Glen Campbell once sung) is only a temporary answer. In time it was something she gradually grew out of, as people told me she would, but you grow-up with your child and you share their pain and their anxieties.

The First Laugh

"When the first baby laughed for the first time, the laugh broke into a thousand pieces and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies." Peter Pan

The first six to ten weeks of a baby's life are arguably the most difficult for the parents as all the infant does is eat, sleep and scream, without any concept of day and night. I loved the fact that I was a father and I loved my child for what I knew she would become, but I had no real connection with her. For her the feeling was clearly mutual. I was just the one who did not feed her.

That changed one afternoon after work when, armed with a suggestion I'd read in a book, I experienced my first interactive moment with Cate. I got her attention and then stuck my tongue out at her. She gave a pensive expression and then stuck her tongue out at me. The start of a beautiful frienship.