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.