Forgot how nice this was

It's all too much!ma

Madeleine Rose Coulter

It begins...

Barney’s Brain Spurt

Some kids have growth spurts but Barney hasn’t had one of those for a while. Instead, he keeps having brain spurts, where overnight he is suddenly forming more complicated sentences, is full of energy and desperate to try things out. This happened just the other day and from dawn to dusk he was non-stop and apparently now has a giant vocabulary. Like planet-devouring Galactus he has an enormous appetite for learning and, also like Galactus, he can be a bit tiring to keep up with (ask The Silver Surfer).

He’s also indescribably cute, which you could never really say of Galactus!

This was the day he told me
“I don’t like bicycles.”
“No?”
“No. I love motorcycles.”

And told me how he would drive a car we had just passed up the stairs of Auntie Katie’s house and when she answered the door, confronted with the devastation and mess from the car scraping up the staircase she would say
“Hola!”
I’m not so sure.

Lots of learning and growth happens really gradually, and he picks up and tries out words and phrases like “I suppose so” over time. But then when these sudden shifts happen it’s great. Why it happens, whether lots of connections suddenly come together in his brain (literally or metaphorically), or he gets a bit of confidence to try things he’s been thinking about I don’t know but he obviously really enjoys it too, he’s always in a great mood following these spurts. So for the past few days he’s been a real livewire, running everywhere and jabbering away non-stop.

We start every morning with his milk and reading a couple of books in bed, sometimes letting one of me or Rach get a shower (I always hate having a shower during this since it’s such a nice part of the day) and on this day he was full of fun. When I came back from the shower he was lying flat and made us lie flat next to him, which he found really funny. When Rach wouldn’t because she wanted to get dressed or dry her hair or some equally boring grown-up thing Barney changed his tack and said in a casual voice
“Mummy, I’ll tell you something.” and patted the bed next to him.
Eventually Rach gave in and lay down too – I can’t remember what he had to tell her but it was mission accomplished! He’s getting really good at using words to get people to do things, playing the sort of tricks we take for granted to gently get our way. Plus, grammatically speaking, his use of pronouns and tenses are really good and he uses words like just, maybe and because well too. His Please’s and Thank you’s are much better. Even sorry occasionally.

And oh yes, he has entered the “Why?” stage.

Over and over, although sometimes “That’s just the way it is.” does work, or he thinks the explanation is good enough. I think he also likes the fact that asking Why? makes us say something.

Many years before I had kids I would joke about all the made-up facts I would tell my future progeny, like all lifts have a special button to take you to the moon, or policemen keep their lunch cool under their hats. I think most dads do this - hence the term Dad Jokes and the excalamation "Da-aad!". There’s even a book all about this very laudable aim (Great Lies To Tell Small Kids) but I’ve shied away from it in practise. Even though I know that, apparently, long-term memories aren’t laid down until 3 or so he’s already quite an interesting chap so I find it hard to believe nothing present in his brain has the potential to be permanent, and so the last thing I want to do is fill his head with junk! While his brain is so plastic (although this plastic stage lasts to some extent until around 10, if I remember Cognitive Science correctly) and he’s so avaricious for knowledge I don’t want to give him mental indigestion.

And I must admit it appeals to me enormously to be a source of good information – regardless of the continued appropriateness of this as a gender role it feels like a traditional fatherhood role to teach your child how the world works in terms of practical things like the colour of the sky, how cars work and fishing - obviously I can leave the feelings stuff to his mother.

Either that or rely on the advice of another great dad on dealing with emotions:

"Just squeeze your rage up into a bitter little ball and release it at an appropriate time, like that day I hit the referee with the whiskey bottle" -Homer J Simpson.

Homer Simpson also said: "I always say a boy can learn more at an airport than at any school." and any statement a 2 year old would agree with shows you're doing something right, right?

I’ve been looking forward to talking to Barney about science, myths, comics and other essentials since he was born so I don’t want to blow it. Imagine if he grew up to be a Creationist! Or even worse if he didn’t want to read science-fiction! I have to hope I’m as good as he is at subtle persuasion. It hasn’t worked in all the years of knowing Rach and encouraging her to read comics but I’m hoping, without much conviction, that Barney will be more malleable.

There’s too much at stake for tricks at this stage. Maybe when he’s a bit older and knows when I’m teasing I can restore the humorous lies plan but for now he’s getting the truth.

Well, until he starts asking about babies (which the stork bring), or taxes or other little understood matters. No-one needs to know about that sort of nonsense.

Alone again, naturally

The following was written a couple of weeks ago, when Barney and Rachy were in Spain and I was at home. Having spent a few days over there with them I came back to the empty house. Contrary to expectation I didn’t go out every night or particularly enjoy the opportunity to watch Smallville, Reaper and The Sarah Connor Chronicles, it was just a bit lonely. Thanks goodness I’d bought a Nintendo DS at the airport to genuinely waste some time mindlessly!

When I left them in my sister-in-law’s flat in Barcelona I wasn’t sure what to tell Barney to explain why I wasn’t going to be around for the next 5 days so I told him I was going to work for a few days. He may not know what work is – and won’t until he is old enough to read Richard Scarry’s “What Do People Do All Day” as I did when I was little – but he’s used to hearing it when we say goodbye to him for the day, so I thought that would be okay. And in truth I wasn’t expecting him to be too sad since he was spending time with his mum, his aunties and in particular his cousins who he adores. He and Tita (one year older) play well and seem to be on the same wavelength but Ollie, getting on for 7, is pretty much a superhero in his eyes. And there are of course two new babies to prod. Welcome Isobel and !

So all fine, except for me who was miserable at leaving them. And then Rachy reported their conversations that evening
“Daddy’s gone to work.” He said, apropros of nothing and when Rach asked if he wanted the Barney Song – the traditional final step of the night-time ritual he said No because “We need Daddy for the Barney Song. Daddy’s not here.”

Sigh.

Now, you can be objective about these things and think that if he was at home I would only see him for a couple of hours a day during the week anyway. While that is true he seems to develop so quickly when we spend long, concentrated spells with him. It’s hard to be objective about missing that, missing his developing personality.

Which made me think it was overdue time I wrote something about Barney’s personality.

Chris (my brother, for new readers of…ah, never mind) commented a while ago that he wasn’t sure how much of Iris’ behaviour was her unique personality and how much was just the way that toddlers are. It’s an interesting question I think and like horoscopes do you just see the bits you agree with, or want to agree with as good character traits and ignore the ones that don’t fit , or consider them as one-off examples of bad behaviour? Do you attribute more meaning than is appropriate to nuances and subtleties of behaviour that might not signify anything, just as you do to a newborn baby? Or alternatively are those nuances genuine signs of an emergent personality which, although anyone other than the parent wouldn’t spot, are none the less real for that. In an unusually non-sceptical tack I have to admit that I do think there is a fully formed personality there already – and has been for a while.

If it’s hard to pin down what those traits are then that’s okay – I’ve always thought the better you know someone the less sure you can be how they will react in a given situation because real personalities are a lot more subtle and complex than movie archetypes, and if you know someone very well you can see the possibility of them responding in more than one way.

Still, a few aspects of Barney’s personality I think we’ve spotted:

He’s quite stubborn
Now, he rarely shouts and cries to get his way but he does remain resolute and immovable. On the question of food and how much he’s going to eat I think we have to trust him rather than make meal-times arenas for angst. He’ll look you in the eye while he eats mayonnaise or ketchup with his fingers, like a decadent Roman, daring you to challenge him but wanting to show you how bored he is by the very idea of our petty bourgeois manners.

Can be Introverted
While all toddlers need a break from noise and fuss to not get worn out or crazed I think Barney’s limits with people are reached quicker than others – more than lots of kids we know I’d say he likes a bit of private time.
“I play by myself now.”
Partly it’s shyness as when he feels like one of the gang, and welcome, he can be a leader, sometimes even bossy but he tends to be wary about getting involved. From a very young age he was always more reticent than other kids about joining in with dancing and group games so I think it’s a genuine aspect of his personality. Me and Rach are both a bit introverted so the way he acts seems very familiar to us both – and since he was like that from so young it’s hard to imagine that it is learned behaviour. Generally, he takes his time to get used to people – once he knows someone well then he plays really freely with them. And we know from his nursery report that in large noisy groups he doesn’t always speak up with answers, even when the carers know he knows the answer – but in smaller groups he is much bolder. Rach thinks he’s like her and doesn’t enjoy being the centre of attention. If you don’t believe me you try singing karaoke to her at in public. And in fact if I sing a non-nursery rhyme Barney usually says “Stop it, daddy!” too. So there may be something in it.

..But he likes to involve others
He’s a curious mix – although I’ve said he has a touch of the introvert there are lots of things he enjoys more if others are involved and I think it comes from not wanting others to miss out on something good. Even when he was only 1-and-a-bit at food times at the nursery he would say “Come on, come on” and impatiently motion the other kids to join him at the table.

He is apparently usually first to the table too and it has been pointed out to me that greed could be the reason for both these things, for which the finger of blame tends to land on me (but I’m not sure as I wouldn’t give anyone else a chance at the buffet until I’d had a fairly comprehensive sweep).

Funny
He loves to make people laugh! His best joke is falling over, in ways which have become increasingly “dynamic” (by which I mean “frightening for a parent to watch”) as he’s gotten older and better coordinated. He gets a lot of mileage out of this with the girls at nursery and does it to entertain himself at home (falling backwards off his small chair onto the sofa, for example) but his other speciality is facial expressions: peering out from under his mop, frowning for no reason and generally displaying superb comic timing.

So these are some of the things I’m missing the chance to observe for a week, and it feels like a long week. The real Barney you only get to know when you spend time with him and maybe a list, an index of personality traits, doesn’t capture that properly but like the Turing test for machine intelligence I think when the signs are all there you have to concede it’s a real, distinct personality. You have to trust your subjective judgement and I know that during this week I’m missing all sorts of tricks, all sorts of laughs and funny faces, and all sorts of great achievements, like climbing up the steps of the slide all by himself. I’m glad Rach is getting to spend some quality time with him and Barney with her, so that’s good but when it comes to being rational and thinking I’m not missing more than a few hours, it’s really a week with a funny little boy who we’re stating to get to know really well.

Why would you want to be objective about that?

Ah well. Back to dinner for one. And I really must get the place tidied up before the gang get home.

Communication Part 1

The flood of Barney and me updates continues unabated…. apologies to all reader(s) who have struggled to keep up with the flow.

Landmark day – a few mornings ago Barney said for the first time “I love you, daddy” and gave me a big cuddle. Unfortunately this was the morning he also whacked me in the eye and knocked my contact lens out, which I inevitably knelt on while trying to stop him walking about and breaking it, so there is a certain jarring inconsistency between his words and deeds at the moment. Still, it was nice to hear.

Anyway, it’s clearly high time I wrote something about his exploding communication skills.

He’s been talking for a while now but he’s always been a good communicator so we never really considered any of the baby sign language courses that are around these days. Pointing and grunting worked well from when he was little – (and Barney got by too! b’dum tish!) and if we tried to pass him the wrong thing he could impatiently waggle his hand in ways that meant “No, a little to the left,” “No, the one behind – no, behind it! Yes, that’s it” and “Do I have to come over there myself?” and so on. He never really got frustrated at being unable to express himself and picked up a few useful words* at an early age with any missing words compensated for by an amazingly rich vocabulary of tone-of-voice, with several tones irreproducible in the adult world but rich with meaning. Such as answering a question he doesn’t know the answer to with a firm but jolly “Hmmm”, or a questioning “Yeeesss?” not unlike the encouraging noises an elderly aunt might make to pretend she can hear you and please do carry on. I like to think it’s following in a great Coulter tradition of giving authoritative yet on closer examination reliably equivocal answers to questions we really don’t know the answers to.

And now he’s talking non-stop.

* Such as cheese, please and yes.

Since he was tiny Barney would wake up pretty early and entertain himself in his cot, babbling away. We’d lie in bed laughing but also trying to get back to sleep for a precious extra 10 minutes or so (we figured if we got him up whenever he woke he’d just keep getting earlier until eventually he’d be doing shift-work, which isn’t what we wanted for him).

A few months ago we could recognise tunes he was singing (as he lay in his cot) but not really the words – now the words are absolutely clear. And we sat on a bench on the way home the other week to sing Bob the Builder, although he only knows the first verse and chorus. Have we been remiss in not giving him enough TV opportunities to learn verse 2? It’s so hard to tell. I’m as impressed by his ability to hold a tune as much as the words to be honest – the boy has a bright future in karaoke!

His earliest words were of course no and yes (preceded briefly by yeah and followed for about 1 day by a cowboy-like yep) but with lots of different intonations. My favourite was probably the occasions when he would walk up to me and with me sitting down, maybe on the step to the kitchen, put one hand on my shoulder, bend over and peer into my face to emphatically say “Yes”. Just to be sure I got the message. There’s no sincerity quite as sincere as the sincerity of a toddler.

Soon after he acquired short phrases like “Oh no!” if he dropped something, usually deliberately and often accompanied by covering his face and grinning (this wasn’t one of his sincere moments), and the related “oh dear!” as well as “oh wow” and the sometimes appropriate “bless you”. The whole sneeze-bless-you thing made him laugh though so he would say “again” to make us do fake sneezes so he could say it and laugh at it again. Another early favourite was “Ulp me”, a very slightly shorter version of “help me” often followed by “Mummy / Daddy do it”, possibly with his arms lifted over his head so we knew we were meant to carry him somewhere. Sometimes the lesser spotted “Barney do it”. Now he just says “I want daddy carry me”.

Sentences started to get more complex, although without any real grammar, such as “stay play mummy daddy house” which since were getting him ready for nursery at the time tugged at the heartstrings a bit. When he first came out with sentences like “I want new book” we were thrilled almost as much as we were appalled by his rampant materialism.

Meanwhile “Let’s go” is a favourite along with “Come on, Daddy” usually delivered in a plaintive tone and accompanied by an outstretched hand to take me to the living room where the toys are gathered. It’s not impatient exactly yet somehow manages to sound as if he’s already asked a hundred times and he’s being very patient to ask again – the hand is in case I can’t find my own way, I think

The real reason for making this entry is because there’s something rather wonderful about every new sentence at the moment, whether it shows a new word used correctly, a piece of grammar assimilated or just an amusingly grown-up phrase coming out in his lovely, tiny voice. And we suddenly realised that at some point soon, it won’t be so amazing that he’s just said an interesting sentence, it will be expected. Right now seems like a magical time full of new words and realisations that his use of them signals a fresh thing understood and for us a new snapshot of the inside of his head. I wanted to capture that emerging voice before I forgot how extraordinary it is, now that we finally have an idea what he’s actually thinking (incidentally, a friend of mine once told me that he was desperate for his kids to start talking so he knew what was going on in their world. But then he found out that it was actually very boring. I’m still loving it but then the “Why”s haven’t started yet). I'm sure this will be followed by short entries only me and Rach will love saying "Today he said this and it was so funny!" Apologies in advance to my other reader.

Plus the other reason, to record the first time Barney spontaneously told me he loved me. It could be argued that he doesn’t know exactly what it means yet but it's hard to deny that I’m on the right track if I’ve been put in the same select company as Mousey, Iggle Piggle and Macca Pacca.

Now that it’s in print I’ll always have it to point to when he’s telling me that he hates me just because I won’t let him stay up past midnight to watch Saw vs Jaws, Part II: The Sharpest Tooth, or The Evil Dead meet The Living Dead: They Call Out for Pizza! or even Aliens vs Predator 45: The Revenge of Michael Jackson (surely no-one will believe he was real in 20 years time?).

Doing It For The Kids

Following up on Barney being a mummy’s boy I feel it is only fair to report that he has had a phase where his mummy didn’t get a look in. No, for a period of several weeks only I was good enough. Knowing how difficult this can be for the other parent I like to think I was sensitive to Rach’s feelings but it was handy for getting me out of things I didn’t want to do –“Oops, sorry, have to follow Barney”, who would be dragging me away from the boring (in his view, I emphasise) adults with a “Let’s go, daddy!” Okay, let’s. Just time for a wry shrug indicating of-course-I-want-to-stay-but-what-can-you-do?

(Get me out of here, shorty.)

We really need to work out a code for this sort of exit.

Since then, a good few months ago, things have been much more balanced on the Best Parent-o-meter but I must record this moment, as reported to me sitting at my desk, over the phone.

Every Friday, Barney and Rach go to a singing class. I went once (with Barney) and it was good, he enjoys it more than the one I sometimes take him to on Saturdays, where he stares at the leader, refuses to march to the Grand Old Duke of York and spends the ‘free play’ time in the middle sitting in a corner with the big box of plastic and rubber animals (and dinosaurs, and a handful of fantastic creatures -a phoenix and some dragons. Plus some super-cheap meant-to-be-dinosaurs but actually look like dragons, or more specifically Godzilla).

But anyway…

Today at the end of singing, around midday, Barney walked over to where Rach had left her coat, brought it over to her, then picked up his own and said “Go home. See daddy.”

But I was at work! It made me feel quite sad but also secretly pleased, of course. Even though it is a little less special since I found out that, in my absence, Barney was then placated with the promise of seeing Harry, a stuffed bear, instead.

Still – I was first choice, ahead of the bear! In your face, Harry!

Until recently I might even have been waiting at home, as for the last year I was working at ITV as a technical project manager. Interesting projects, great people but a role that just wasn’t me, one of the great advantages was that the days, since I was only billing for the hours I put in, were very flexible. And I got quite used to being able to be around on Fridays (Barney’s day off nursery) and generally see more of him. It still feels funny not to be ale to, all of 3 weeks into my ….new job!

Yes, after 1 year of wondering if I would ever get back on track with business development I have a new job. Yay me, as they say in Sunnydale.

…Which I only mention on this blog because Barney was a big factor in me going for the job in the first place – and probably also a factor in me getting it. I now work as a Commercial Analyst for Nickelodeon, children's TV broadcaster and owners of Barney favourites such as Roary the Racing Car, Thomas The Tank Engine and Friends and Wonderpets (which is spectacularly good), as well as future faves Dora the Explorer (it’s very popular) and the incomparable SpongeBob Squarepants. A big part of my interest in the role was my recent introduction to Nickelodeon properties as a consumer, thanks to Barney, and my feeling, reinforced in the interviews, that Nickelodeon (or Nick, as we call it round here) is, more than most kids TV broadcasters, a little... nicer. They are more conspicuously ethical and active in terms of being careful about commercial exploitation, social responsibility programmes and investing in original UK content (or bothering to re-dub some US programmes for a UK audience). The latter I think is really important – and Nick don’t do it all the time but they do do it some of the time. As Ofcom put it “reflecting a range of cultures and opinions from around the UK” (in their report on priorities for PSB kids tv). It’s a stance Nick takes pretty seriously and it’s part of a raft of concerns about kids tv which I care about principally because of Barney, which I think in turn helped make me a more credible candidate. I could say more about their values, and maybe one day I will, but suffice to say for now that it’s a place I can believe in and I’m really looking forward to contributing.

Plus their formal offer letter was covered with orange splats and their website says “Loading snot… loading giggles... loading burps” when you go to it.

And they did mention freebies at the interview. Plus I’m hoping that when he’s a bit older Barney will get a big kick from knowing his dad works at Nickelodeon (I think it may even be verging on cool).

One day you’ll thank me for this, Barnacle!

Even if, right now, I’m not always there when you expect me.