Hartley: Twenty-One Months

Hello little wiener!

It’s your mummy here. You turned 21 months old on the 11^th of October, which isn’t too long ago now. There seems to be a massive difference between this month and the last, and if I could be bothered to go back and read my terrible scribblings on the matter, I could possibly discern what those differences might entail. Alas, no. Re-reading things I’ve written is one of my least favourite pastimes, somewhere in the vicinity of trying to scour the remnants of sausage from a pan so badly scorched it is practically painted over with a slick new coat of charcoal. Somewhere down there.

Okay, so presently you are a tiny, adorable, highly-strung madman who breathes heavily through your mouth as you concentrate on clicking magnetic train cars together, sometimes snorting because of the pressure your bowed head is exerting on your nasal passages (I don’t know, I’m not a biophysicist [is there even such a thing?]), and then starts to hyperventilate when it all goes pear shaped and one of the cars detaches and then derails as you’re feeding it through a tunnel. I’m glad to see you take after me with your near-autistic approach to projects, and hope that you don’t become even more like me and abandon them altogether when you see that the potential for failure and limited enjoyment is not only possible but imminent. Until such time, I will be sitting right next to you, popping the caboose back in place before you turn around and notice, and probably making things worse somehow.

You are a funny little thing, and now you display habits I was either not around for or just not paying attention to (more likely) when you invented them, which makes them extra hilarious. Such as that noise you make when you are about to do something naughty - like make a play for my non-existent breast milk, or examine the contents from Under The Sink - that ‘Sssssss’ sound as you delve into the forbidden activity with impish delight. I’m not sure what the noise is meant to accomplish, but it’s almost placating enough that I’ll let you snake your hand into my top briefly, or pull out a foil wrapped tablet of laundry detergent from the cupboard before putting an end to your indiscretion.

You remember things from weeks ago and turn them into little songs: one afternoon I got fed up with bruising the soles of my bare feet on your many scattered miniature cars and began to whisk them off into their basket. You shouted NA NA NO! at me as I did this, and I said Tidy! We’re going to tidy your cars now! and you slapped my hand away from the basket and tipped out the contents, saying NA NA NO! until I laughed and gave up. Now, you’ll stop in your tracks suddenly, and out of nowhere do the I’m Not Going to Tidy Up song, which goes as follows:

Tidy…NnnA Na no.

Tidy…NnnA Na no.

&ct.

It’s really quite catchy, and now I just get you to sing it whenever I remember, or you just sing it whenever you remember, and nothing will ever be tidy ever again. But oh how we laugh, you and I.

Or is it you and me?

Anyway.

I’m trying not to get too caught up in the particulars of each month, or I will scare myself off from doing these letters, and I really don’t want to stop doing them. My therapist says that I often discredit my achievements, and she’s probably right, but what I don’t want to do is to let my own negative core beliefs ruin my memories of what it was like to be your mother in these early years, and to not write them down to the best of my ability. What a shame that would be – to let all of this go because I was too wrapped up in my own issues to acknowledge the importance of what I’m trying to accomplish for us. I should just write the letters, at least until I can commemorate your existence in a more productive way, like making sure I stay on top of laundry so that you don’t have to wear the same pair of socks too many days in a row.

I might edit this down somewhat when you’re old enough to read.

Your bedtime routine is set in stone, with the bun-bun-bun and the squirrel and the neighbours and the stars and apple tree being the mainstay of what we say goodnight to each evening after you’ve been bathed and soft-bagged and we’re standing at the window. Though the other evening you stopped us after squirrel and turned our nightly adieu into an inventory of things you could recall of our garden: “Aaaand…rocks. Aaaand…slide. Aaaand…other house.”

Ah yes – your penchant for counting. You are a natural with numbers, and sometimes I don’t even think you realise you’re counting. Like you’ll sift through the contents of your car basket and slowly count up to ten as you separate them out, which isn’t the same as counting them, I admit, but I won’t come down on you too hard about this until you’re at least two. You’ve finally worked out which of your cars are blue, and now you’ll approach me with one in each hand and say “Two blue cars.” And you know that something is more than one when you say ‘other one,’ which sounds like ‘ah uhn.’ There is a large abacus in the park we took you to over the weekend, and your father and I watched while you pulled each bead away from the group as you counted to ten. It didn’t matter that sometimes you pulled off two at a time, or skipped out on reciting the number five or nine. We know you’re a maths genius at heart and that’s good enough for us.

Sometimes I get very stressed out and anxious about your wellbeing, though it’s usually over things that are unlikely or out of my control. The things I don’t worry about are things I worry that I should be worried about, in case not worrying about them makes me a bad parent. I wonder if I should worry if you have dyslexia, for instance, because you often reverse sounds for words you know, like ‘Ickbits.’ That’s what you call ‘Biscuits.’ Is that normal? Probably, but who has time to read up on this stuff? (Everyone but me; I’m failing you! Haha…) You can say ‘Trousers,’ sort of (you say ‘sousas’) but you still call ‘Jeans’ ‘Eeniss.’ I guess I will worry about this in earnest when you start nursery next year, and all the other children are at a Year-3 reading level while you’re still bashing your head against the floor to let people know you wanted juice instead of water.

That head-banging thing has to stop now, by the way. The low, warning growl you do is more than enough to let us know you’re displeased with the situation at hand, and escalating it to self-harm will not accomplish anything. I know you understand this and are probably just too upset in the moment to care about consequence (or lack thereof) but I’m hoping you get it through your head sometime soon. I’m not being literal when I say that.

Okay Chicken, I think that just about covers it for now. I really wanted to put across how you’ve grown into a little boy, even though the back of your head gets that nested look from sleeping on wet hair, which reminds me of when it looked like that all the time because you didn’t really have hair yet. I do so love you as a baby, and really mourn the passing of these months, even as I look forward to learning more and more about you as you continue to grow and figure yourself out.

Happy 21^st month, my tiny boo. I love you so very much.

Hartley: Twenty Months

A dictionary of your favourite words or phrases, on your 20th month:

Ah-aye (-pronoun): ‘Hartley,’ if said in combination with an index finger aimed at your throat.

Ah-mudum (-verb): It used to mean ‘living room,’ but now it basically means ‘follow me,’ ‘come this way’ or ‘please stop washing dishes and come and play; this is boring.’

Ah-munamunamunamuhBODEE (-verb): I’m going to ask you about this when you’re older, because right now nobody has a CLUE what you’re saying, though it never varies.

All-room (-noun): your new word for ‘living room,’ which I’m sorry to say is where you eat all your snacks and meals. A bad habit I’m trying to rid you of without starving you.

App duce (-noun): ‘Apple juice’ which is how you’ve begun to refer to all forms of juice, which you’re not even supposed to be drinking, because it will ruin your teeth.

Beh-puss (-noun): Breakfast, not to be confused with toothpaste. Easy to do, first thing in the morning

Boo-bat (-noun): aka ‘Boo bag’, aka sleeping bag. As we nicknamed you ‘Boo’ for some reason, we thought it apt to refer to the bag you sleep in as a ‘Boo bag.’ We did this consistently for such a long period of time that you’ve taken to calling it this yourself. In fact, you refer to yourself as ‘Boo’ when you see a photo of you, or of any baby (though you also refer to babies as ‘baby’). You sort of extend the ‘oo’ so that it sounds more like ‘Booo-ah’ which I find unbearably cute.

Buh-puss (-noun): Toothpaste. Often preceded by TEESS! You’re only meant to have a pea sized amount, but I think your father probably gives you more.

BUN (-verb): Bounce!

Dadoo (-noun): or ‘thank you.’ You’ve since learned to say ‘thank you, daddy’, though you apply this gratitude indiscriminately. So for example, were I to hand you an apple, you might say ‘dadoo, daddy!’ This morning I taught you to say ‘thank you, mummy,’ and you nearly managed it (‘dadoo, da-….dadoo mummy’), but not quite.

Duh-do (-noun): ‘Play-doh’ which you mainly want to squish into the carpet or eat, which is why it’s currently stored on a high shelf.

Ee-ee-doon (-noun): Upsidedown. You say this if something is upsidedown, like a toy, or a book character, though you also like to lean your head as far back as you can while saying ‘ee-ee-doon,’ I guess because that’s how the world looks to you. I’ve even watched you do a downward dog and look between your own legs as you say this, which is impressive on a number of levels.

Eenis (-noun): Jeans. You say this each time you see that I’m about to put them on you.

Hudoh (-verb): ‘Huggle,’ which is what people in England call a cuddle. It’s actually a cross between a cuddle and a hug, and when you say it, you squeeze your arms around my neck and drag out the word like you’ve heard us do so many times now.

Mo (-adj.): As in ‘mo, mo?’ as in ‘more, more?’ The deadpan way you say this with chocolate sauce smeared on your chin after you’ve demolished a Cornetto cracks us up.

Mun (-noun): which is what you call the gingerbread man we bought you once, and must now buy for you each time we pass Gregg’s. You mainly want to eat the candy buttons off his chest, but sometimes you will deign to chew a bit of biscuit when those three buttons are bitten off and swallowed.

Nu-ck (-noun): ‘Milk,’ which you don’t say anymore, now that you’ve been weaned. I was really sad that first night we put you to bed without it, since you said ‘milk’ properly for the first time ever. You might say it now when we give you cereal, but if we give it to you in a cup, you spit it down your shirtfront in disgust. I don’t blame you at all.

Ole dun (-adj.): ‘All done,’ which you say when you’ve finished a meal, when you want to get down from your chair, or when you’re finished with any scenario, really (eg. if you tire of a nursery rhyme and want me to stop singing it too, you’ll say ‘Ole dun!’).

Papet (-noun): ‘Packet,’ which is what you call the packages containing pureed vegetable matter.

Pat pat, niss niss (-noun or -verb): ‘Feet feet, knees knees’ – my instructions to you when you’re crawling backwards down stairs, but now you repeat this mantra anytime you’re negotiating stairs, up or down, however you manage them.

Pease (-noun): Can mean please, but it can also refer to a specific packet of baby food, which contains broccoli, pears and peas. Thank god you don’t really know what you’re saying, as I’d be hard-pressed to get a vegetable - other than string beans - into you any other way.

Peepo (-noun): refers, of course, to Peepo, your favourite storybook right now.

Piss (-noun): Fish, which you love in finger form, or breaded and baked. You haven’t yet clued into the fact that it also refers to the living creature, and I dread the day you realise I sometimes refer to you as poultry. You also like to use this in place of your usual word for ‘crisps,’ just to make things a bit confusing for us.

Puhpa (-noun): Pizza

Shit (-noun): Sit or shirt or shorts. I hope.

Sit dare (-verb): ‘Sit there,’ which is what you say when you want us to get down and play on your level. You often illustrate exactly where you’d like us to be, by stabbing your index finger at the floor. Usually you are pretty forgiving if we miss the mark by about a foot or so.

TAIN (-noun): which is how you say ‘train!’which you cannot say unenthusiastically, ever.

Tess (-noun or -verb): an approximate sound that could mean cheese, teeth, toast, kiss, juice, crisps (baby puffs) or chase, depending on the context. If I’m in the kitchen and you’re shouting this on the other side of the safety gate, I can be almost certain you mean cheese, juice, toast or crisps, but I’ve been wrong before.

Tetsup (-noun): Ketchup. Anything that’s a sauce or spread, in fact, though you only want it to be ketchup.

Tits (...): I’m not sure about this one, but I do know that nobody has ever said this word (aloud) in your presence, so.

Too tie (-adv.): ‘Too tight,’ which is what I asked you once when you didn’t want me to put jeans on you. I’m still not sure if you understand what it means, but you say it every time I do up the top button of your jeans, which makes me worry and then loosen the waistband so that it sits around your middle like a hoola-hoop.

Touses (-noun): Trousers.

Tsitsin (-noun): which means ‘kitchen’ which is something you say about 90 times per day. Usually you will put your arms up and demand I carry you there, but sometimes you will say ‘hand!’ and reach up for my hand, which means we are going to walk there together.

Up-taz (-verb): ‘Upstairs,’ which usually means ‘let’s go upstairs,’ though sometimes you say it when you’re already upstairs, and then we know you mean ‘downstairs,’ which I guess you don’t have a word for yet.

Okay, tiny boo. This list is officially ole dun. I love you more than all the words in the dictionary – yours, mine and every other dictionary imaginable. So there.

Hartley: Eighteen and Nineteen Months

Hello my darling,

You know how they say with jet lag that you need one whole day to readjust for every hour of time difference? I’m not actually sure that this is true, but I’ve been thinking: for every month of your life beyond, say, seventeen, I contend that anyone wishing to document this period requires an additional three – not only because the developmental milestones begin to take on a half life, but because this acceleration necessarily occupies much of the documenter’s time. In other words, Chicken: you’re a handful.

I might have been tempted to allow myself to become totally consumed by the hourly theatre of our engagement, but then something happened to make me realise that getting these things down is essential, and that something was muh-mon.

Let me explain. You’ve been a very lucky baby in the sense that mummy has not, until very recently, come up with an adequate argument for weaning you. Not the tactful and tactless remarks about how it appears to others, not the time it takes nor the fear of co-dependency has managed to convince me to suddenly stop giving you milk in the way you’re accustomed to having it. Because this bond has stretched into speech, you are able to not only ask for it (duck) but also determine which side your next sip is coming from (muh-mon - an approximation of ‘other one’).

Yesterday, after a short discussion, your father and I decided that now would be a good time to wean you. I am still trying not to feel selfish in wanting to do this, as you so plainly love your milk, whereas other weaned babies were growing bored of it anyway. But it has to be done sometime, and we were prepared to drop the morning feed for a week to see how you got on. You adjusted so well that, by breakfast, your daddy got excited and figured we may as well drop the evening feed too.


The morning feed was daddy’s favourite one because you’ve always been a little comedian within that first hour of waking, and you’d intersperse your drink with many surprising antics, such as when you decided to start speaking in a whisper, or when you said nonsensical things using that scary redrum! voice we taught you to use when saying daddy. I guess you had to be there.

The nighttime feed has always been my personal favourite though, because you’re just as silly, but in a sleepy, sweet way, and there are few greater pleasures than gently lowering you into your cot as you yawn and sigh and giggle and sing to try and make me stay a few seconds longer. I very nearly let your father talk me into dropping the nighttime feed too, but in the end I had to insist on another week - partly due to my own discomfort, but mainly because I want to say good-bye to this lovely phase in our relationship. It is very hard, if not impossible, to say good-bye to something that is already gone, Hartley.

So that night I sat with you in my arms, in the wicker chair by the window, and when you were finished with one side of your feed, you sat up and said muh-mon. I couldn’t believe that it had only taken me a single day to forget this little Hartley-ism, which surely would have been lost had I gone ahead with the plan of full-out weaning. This is what I mean about it being important to get these things down in the moment. I think some people believe that if you forget something, it wasn’t useful or important enough to keep in mind to begin with. I happen to believe that human beings have very poor memories, even those who have good ones, so. Muh-mon. I promise I won’t forget.


So in the spirit of remembering, and perhaps doing what the Impressionists did best, I will try to employ a lighter stroke and more movement in this next, broader sketch of your life thus far.

You know zillions of words, and if you can’t easily pronounce something, you simply replace it with another word you like better. I am your best translator because I’m almost always a witness to these syntactical inventions, though sometimes even I struggle to work out what you’re saying. It took me a long while to figure out that when you say Ahmudam (like Ah, madame but less French), what you mean is: Mother, please follow me – I’ve something to show you. And when you say mudam and stab your index finger at the ground, it means you want me to settle in and watch you. If you see something you want, you often indicate your desire by saying I dedit (I’ll get it) rather delicately, which sometimes means that I should get it for you, and when you’re climbing backwards downstairs you say pat pat, knee knee (feet feet, knees knees), which is our climbing-down-the-stairs mantra.

It didn’t take you long to work out that if you come to me with your hands atop your head in a gesture of alarm and shout OHHH NOOOO, I will follow you back to the living room where you’ve tipped your bowl of cereal onto the floor because you were finished your breakfast and didn’t know what to do with the remnants. One time you went very silent, and I came in and saw that you’d poured an entire bottle of water onto the coffee table and were trying to mop it up with a wet wipe. You looked up from your work and said OHHH NOOOO as though we were both the victims of a terrible misfortune, perhaps some natural disaster, like a flood that only hit certain parts of England – specifically our coffee table. In these instances, I say Oh no! right along with you and quickly help you clean up your mess. I’m not sure if I’m meant to be telling you that you’ve done wrong, but I figure there’s plenty of time for the naughty corner or whatever.

Your father has already taught you the merits of the naughty corner. If you colour on the telly, for instance, he will say in his best gruff voice: HARTLEY. DO YOU WANT TO GO TO THE NAUGHTY CORNER? And you grin and say Yeah. And then you toddle off to park yourself at the designated seat of naughtiness (the front entrance), and wait with great anticipation for him to appear so that you can scream and giggle. It’s a lovely game that completely undermines the purpose of a naughty corner, and we may have to think up some other way of discouraging bad behaviour in the future, when presumably we’ve worked out the difference between ‘bad’ and ‘normal for this age.’ Possibly when you’re sixteen and you set fire to someone’s garage, we will ask you if the garage deserved it. Was it at least empty? And then maybe delete a few apps off your phone.


What else, what else? All dogs are Pippin (Puh-Pun) because for you that shaggy mop from Come Outside is the only non-threatening beast on four legs, and I don’t want you to spend your adolescence cowering from the distant sound of amicable barking. Every time we encounter a dog, be it extradiegetic or in person, I say, “Look! A Pippin!” and you say Puh-Pun, and then moan in abject horror as I try to get you as far and fast away from that doggy vibe as possible. I guess it’s a work in progress.

You can say your own name, in a sense. You point at your throat when you say it, which is how we realised you were indicating yourself in the first place, and you leave out all but a few vowels, so that the end result is something like: ah-aye. You aren’t pronouncing it wrong – you just say it with an English accent, which I guess makes sense, seeing as you’re part English. You could be honouring your Canadian heritage for all I know, in which case you are actually saying ah-eh? We’ll never know, because one day you’ll go off to nursery and your only influence on speech will be a roomful of limeys, and that’s what you’ll best remember. Memory gets better with age, even as parts of it worsen (I’ve no idea if that’s true, but thought this might be another good place to impart wisdom).

Oh and you can run. You can run and you can clomp around slowly in my shoes and you can hit other children over the head with a toy train... Can we skip that last bit actually? Okay good. Your physical confidence is sometimes greater than your agility, though you nearly always manage to stay upright, calculating obstacles and adjusting for them at the last moment. It’s only when you’re tired that you start falling all over the place, though I’ve become very good at anticipating nap time, which we’ve finally pushed to the afternoon, where it belongs. This leaves ample time for play groups and the soft play area in the morning, where my only concern involves you flapping your little chicken wings at somebody who maybe holds a toy you’d quite like – flapping them very close to their face and heads, some might even say making contact in a less-than-gentle fashion...*trails off into a strangled cough*.


So you see: you are coming into your own. A true toddler bursting forth and causing real things to happen in the world: sometimes tears, but far more often smiles and laughter and awe and so much love. I want to bite your little chin because it sticks out when you grin and that invites me to pinch it, which in turn tickles you and so you laugh. I hope you will always laugh easily. It’s a skill that people tend to lose over time. That is actually true.

Okay my little chick. OH. One more thing: you know the melody and lyrics to “Twinkle Twinkle” and you sing it all the time. You also know “Old MacDonald”, “Horsy, Horsy” and a wealth of children’s television programme material that would probably impress no one but your future psychiatrist. And you hold out your hand when there’s a bit of sand or food on it and say Oh, dirty like a posh little Englishman. And just this afternoon, as you negotiated a perilous part of the garden walk, you shot out your arm and yelled hand! So I put my hand out too and you gripped my finger with your five little cold ones and off we went.

See what happens when I leave these letters too long?

Oh darling, I’m so sorry I didn’t mark your 18th month, which you spent in Canada with your Grandma (“GG Bijou” we called her, so we wouldn’t confuse you with your grandma here) (Don’t ask me, she chose it) and grandpa. That was such a big one. But I promise I will try to make more time to get these memories down for us from now on, even if they only serve to sustain my vision of you as a baby, which I think you’ll always be, in my heart.


Happy eighteenth and nineteenth month, Chicken. I love you very, very much.

Hartley: Seventeen Months

Dearest Love

You have been seventeen months for six days now. Every morning your daddy brings you into our bed so that you can have your first milk of the day, and each time it is like I am looking into a different face. You have more definition in the folds of your eyes and the lines around your mouth, and if I didn’t know better, I would think these were deepening from all the smiling and laughing you do. Unless I’ve got it backwards and you’ve been hiding a packet of fags beneath your cot mattress (your primary playgroup is located at the heart of a council estate so it’s in the realm of possibility).

This month you have really and truly grasped language, and repeat pretty well everything I say once, sometimes retaining words I didn’t even know you knew, and using them in the right context, which really blows my mind. Like one morning you stole my cereal bowl because I’d taught you how to drink the leftover milk and you’d already finished all of yours. You tipped the heavy ceramic bowl to your lips, slurped up a mouthful and finished off with an appreciative NICE!, except it sounded more like NOICE! which I guess is down to you being British and all (more on that later).

(More on that now, actually.) The very first word I watched you learn with my own two ears was ‘happy.’ You learned it off the telly, I’m not ashamed to say (maybe a little), and it was mainly because one of the characters kept slamming that word home: “Panzee is happy because she jumped around a lot; Drum is happy because she found a nice yellow banana; Tang is happy because he’s a big dumb ape.” I’m just paraphrasing here – the point is, you watched with mild interest, and when the gorilla’s monologue came to a finish, you looked at me, smiled shyly and said in a lilting voice: Happy. Except you said it like: Hah-pay. Because you are British, and because even though you are meant to have my accent until such time as you are in school and thus mainly influenced by the accent of your peers, you watch an awful lot of CBeebies.


Actually though, we only have the telly on for background noise these days, because for the short amount of time you spend not engrossed in eating meals (0.5 seconds) or brushing your teeth (20 minutes) or napping (it varies) or purposeful outings (…) you are usually playing with your many, many trucks and pointedly ignoring the bubble-eyed, squeaky-voiced, motley-coloured characters aimed at your demographic. To be honest, you’d be perfectly hah-pay to spend the entire day at the sink swirling your toothbrush around the plughole and demanding more paste on your brush, which you do by pointing at your toddler toothpaste tube and squealing Teeeef?! Teeeef?! until I give in and dab a bit more on the bristles.

You really surprised me the other week when you climbed up the steps of your own slide and sat at the top, and when I said “Ready?” you responded with “Stiddy (steady)…DOH! (Go!)” and then “DA DA DOH!” which you deliver as a run-on sentence, and which I think is your approximation of “Get set go!” We asked everyone we could think of to determine where you picked that up, but virtually nobody we spend time with says Ready, steady, go. It wasn’t until I heard another mum at playgroup say it as her own son went down the slide that I realised you have been paying more attention to your environment than even I can claim, and I pay a lot of attention now that you are running full tilt towards the Next Big Thing, and away from your mummy.


I read a heartbreaking article about how, at this age, you are actively pursuing your own aims, even if they conflict with mine, and that this conflict feels desperately dangerous to you. I didn’t know that your fits of head-butting and clawing, spitting rage and flailing limbs were simultaneously tinged with fear that I might not love you for it, so I have been extra careful not to let my frustration or dismay show when you have a full-on tantrum because I wouldn’t let you play with the printer ink cartridges. I want you to take it for granted that we are on solid enough footing that you can make these claims on your agency and literally fight me tooth-and-nail to be your own boss, because in the end, this confidence in yourself will be more important than any inconvenience it might cause me. (I’m still not giving in about the printer ink though.) Thankfully 'yes' has made its way into your repertoire.


You still wake up constantly in the night, though it’s no wonder, as your little mouth is absolutely bursting with new teeth! I bet that hurts. Still, when I come into your room to feed you in the wicker chair by the window, you never take what is more than necessary. You go from one breast to the other, holding your arms up in between so that I can lift you just high enough for you to swing both your legs around like a little gymnast on the pommel horse, and we do that until you’ve had your fill. If I interrupt you too soon, you’ll whimper and cry until we sit back down; once you are finished though, you lift your arms one last time and point at your cot, which I carry you to and gently lower you into. For some reason, these past few nights, as soon as your head hits the pillow, you giggle through your nose and grin your way into sleep. This has become one of my favourite moments of our day.


What can I say, chicken? What will sum you up best this month? Your softest baby skin when you push your face into mine and breathe kisses into my upper lip? The way you set your mouth and then form the letter ‘y’ in your throat seconds before you say ‘yoyo’ when I ask you if you want yogurt? The way you run with your arms outstretched like a drunken zombie, or look people in the eye when you smile at them, as though there’s no doubt in your mind that they’ll love you to bits like we do? I could write an entire novel about your seventeenth month and it would only elucidate your loveliness by a nano-something-or-other. That's a very small amount, if you must know.


I wish I could write more, actually, but I’ve got to keep this short. We’re going to Canada tomorrow, to see your other half (half of the family, that is) and to experience the red carpet treatment like nowhere else. You’ll see what I mean when you’re older.

Hah-pay seventeenth month, chicken. I love you to bits.

Hartley: Sixteen Months

Hello my baby,

I just wanted you to know that I haven’t forgotten about this month’s letter to you; in fact, I think about it every day. I keep waiting for those free hours to appear and instead I am blind sighted by another time-waster (your father and I have lost our passports mere weeks before our trip to Canada, of all things).

In a little while you will be seventeen months old, but today you are sixteen months, and although time is running out on this benchmark, there is time enough to say what’s important for right now.

As ever, you grow more and more beautiful with each passing day, and I don’t mean that metaphorically. You wake up in the morning and somehow you are happier and more animated than even the morning before. This month you are learning new words at an astounding rate and have shown me that you know how to climb to the top of a ladder and float to the base of a slide on your belly, all on your own.



I have always loved you, Hartley, but these past few weeks, and maybe for the first time, I have also really loved being a mother. I think this might mean that I’m getting better at it, and I hope that this is true. I want to give you the best of everything, including myself, because you give us so very much, without asking for a single thing in return (except juice - the answer is almost always water).


Okay my darling. I’m sorry this is so short, but I promise I will tell you everything next time.

All my love,

Your little mummy

Hartley: Fifteen Months

Hello Tiny Boo!

You’ve reached your fifteenth month of life and I do so wish you’d stay still for just a moment so that I can get my head round what and who you are. Life is like that generally for us, though, and I am coming to terms with the fact that I may never again have the presence of mind to collect these moments that mount, ebb and completely dissolve into the essential nutrients that help to fuel each and every day with you.

I would love nothing more than to sit down for a few hours and regularly take stock of all the ways in which you, me and your father continue to grow and change – as individuals and as a family - but the fact of the matter is, whenever I get a bit of time to myself now I am faced with three conflicting options: sleep/relax, clean/organise or read/write. That sounds more like six options, doesn’t it? But they seem less daunting when I pair them up like that, so let’s say three. And when you take into account the amount of dishes and splattered/crumbing foodstuff and toys and dirty nappies of which a day consists, there’s little doubt as to which option mummy is going to chose.

But these letters are so important to me because I don’t want to lose you, and sometimes it feels as though I’m losing you on a daily basis. You leave me breathless with the volume and scale of your development, and even though I can still remember those early days when you sometimes looked to me like a stern, miniature farmer squinting across the vastness of his wheat fields with an equal mixture of weariness and resolve, those memories are always in a state of being dismantled by the startling immediacy of today. I want to remember you just as you are, because even though I know I will love you at every stage of your growth, I know that I will miss the baby you are right at this very moment with all my heart. I also want to be able to share these aspects of you with you when you’re old enough to want to hear about them from me.



This month we were meant to be moving into a two-bedroom flat in the house you’d always known, in London. We were all set to go, and then illness struck for what seemed like the hundredth time - first me and then you and then your father - and life ground to a bit of a halt. It was during that halt that your auntie Kelly called and planted the seed of a solution that we’d heard before but never really listened to. One day you’ll learn that there are plans and ideals that exist in the imagination, and these rarely ever correspond to the organic experience of living. You need more imagination to overcome these invisible patterns of thought, which, come to think of it, has a name: ‘thinking outside the box.’

It wasn’t until I’d processed what auntie Kelly was proposing - not London, but a big house, more varied and accessible amenities, family and the chance at discovering a community and a support network for us all – that I realised how amiss we were in our ideals for what we’d always considered the perfect life. London was fine for two people with a predictable schedule and a certain number of guaranteed hours of free time per week – it was not fine for a new family that was struggling hourly to find its feet, and that needed a simple, easy foundation from which to begin and end each day. For over fourteen months, we’d been wrestling to fit ourselves inside an outdated mold of what we thought life should be like without ever stopping to consider what life was actually like. Once you know what your life is actually like, Hartley, the things you need to do in order to help that life along become apparent quite quickly.



So we put this idea into motion and, within three weeks, a conversation became a concrete plan and you, me and your father were moving to a town just outside of London, called Hitchin (which, incidentally, is where your father and I were married). We now live in a great big house with three bedrooms, three living rooms and a massive long garden for you to play in. More importantly, we live very close to your aunties, uncles, cousins and grandma, all of whom have helped us to settle in and have taken it in turn to bring you into the fold, giving you experiences that no two individuals, however much they love you, could have given you on their own.

While your father and I are enmeshed in the drama of acquiring and assembling the elements of a home, you’ve had to come to grips with learning an unfamiliar environment and the bare bones of a new routine on top of the learning you already do as a baby. This is probably why you’ve been a bit anxious lately, and why, up until a few days ago, you insisted on being carried everywhere, to the extent that if your feet touched the floor for even a few seconds you would scream and cry and head-butt the wall so that I would have to pick you straight back up again. You hadn’t yet committed the layout of the house to memory, much less established where I was likely to be if we weren’t in the same room, and so we suffered a short regression where I think both of us wished you could still fit into your front-facing carrier.



It is difficult to quantify the extent to which these circumstances have come to bear on all the new things you’ve been up to, but I think it’s safe to say that the different and bigger environment has launched you into areas of verbal and physical development heretofore unknown to us all. You don’t just mimic sounds anymore - you understand that words and action have meaning and consequence, and you’ve mastered these tools to the best of your abilities in order to communicate your needs.

Before, if you were full and wanted to get out of your high chair, you would chuck your food on the floor and cry. Now you fling your arms open and declare “Ah duh!” which means “All done!” - which means I’d better get you out of that chair quickly before you lose all faith in the notion that you’ve been understood and get really pissed off. You’ve also sussed somehow that shaking your head means ‘no’ and so if I ask “Do you want nana?” before you’re feeling hungry, you will say “Na?” and shake your head emphatically at me. Sometimes you will even pair this with “Ah duh!” to make your meaning extra clear.

You don’t really let me feed you anymore, and insist on using a fork or spoon in order to put what’s before you in your mouth, with varied success. You’re very good at yogurt, for instance, and not so good with grape halves, which you like to spear with a fork or scoop up with a large, flat spoon, though you will eventually resort to fingers if you’re hungrier than you are interested in studying for your Utensils 101 exam. However self-sufficient you’ve become at meal time, you still believe that there is no greater crime than the post-dinner face and hand wipe, and struggle against these as though undergoing the worst torture imaginable. It’s just a little moisture, darling, it wouldn’t kill you to sit through it.




Your walking has progressed to the extent that you are largely on your feet now, and about half the time you will resort to walking in that wide, shuffling way of yours in order to get from Point A to Point B. Point B, by the way, mainly consists of the cable box, which you turn off shortly after you shoot me a meaningful look and say “Na?” We must try very hard not to laugh at your antics, lest you stop taking us seriously, though you’ve perfected the art of comedy now, and with a well-timed expression could just about get away with putting ham slices on your father’s best comic books.

Your aptitude for demonstrating love and affection is boundless, and if you’re not coming at me with an enthusiastic, open-mouthed baby smile that gets closer and closer until it – “hum” – licks the tip of my nose, or puckering your lips into a fish mouth and releasing them with a tiny smack on my cheek (your auntie Cher taught you this), you’re squeezing my neck in a forceful hug and rub-patting my shoulder to let me know you’re glad I’m here with you.

I am ever so glad that you’re here with me too, little Boo. I have a very good feeling about this new beginning, and I hope that even as we’re busy throwing ourselves into things as we are currently – me, rushing to finish this off; you, screeching with laughter in the living room while daddy swings you around and sings along to his new Roxy Music album – we’ll find time now and again to catch our breath and just take in the vast landscape of our wondrous life, which you’ve shaped and inspired so much more than you can know.



Happy fifteenth month, Walkaconda. I love you extremely very much.

Hartley: Fourteen Months

Hello little love,

This month you were sick and then I was sick and then your father was sick, which made me sick all over again, and so I passed it back to you and then we collectively decided to end it all. Let me explain:

We've been slogging it out in a dirty big city for all the wrong reasons, or reasons that no longer make sense in the context of this family. Do you know how many times over the past thirty days we've stolen into town on the underground to push your buggy through millions of tourists so that mummy can buy a new jumper that will probably end up encrusted with apple puree and then tossed into the bottom of the wardrobe where it will remain until we move out, for example? Go on, have a guess.

The part of our brain that was telling us that we could not move away from London because London is where the exceptional museums and photography galleries and music venues and restaurants live also failed to inform us that, actually, we don't often make use of these opportunities anymore. We're too busy trying to hold our heads up at eight o'clock once you've fallen asleep so that anybody who happens to glance in on us from outside will think we are still alive in here.

And on a particularly difficult evening, after I'd been sending distress signals out over the netwaves (ie - whinging on Facebook), your aunty Kelly called to say that she wanted to take you for the day sometime in the next week to give us a chance to recuperate. Although this didn't happen in the end (our mutant illness can leap over entire townships, it's that powerful), it took her less than an hour to convince me that it might be best for all of us if we moved out of London and closer to family. It took me less than a second to convince your father of that idea the following day, once he'd taken his antibiotic and managed to choke down some toast.

So that is what we are going to do. We cancelled the overpriced 2-bedroom flat we'd found for the end of the month and instead began looking for a house in a village situated just outside London, a half hour away by train. After five days of searching we found a house so magnificent, so far beyond our wildest dreams, that the skin on my arm is virtually blue from the pinching, and all I do now is plan out exactly how I will safely navigate us through the next few weeks so that we can enjoy at least one day in that heavenly place, where we will live like kings with no furniture. Hopefully we will live for more than a day though, and with a mattress.

Apart from the extra space (we have three of nearly everything, including three fireplaces! Who needs three fireplaces? Who cares! We have three of them!), I just know that this decision is going to vastly improve the quality of life for all of us, and especially you. The town is pretty, quiet and slow-paced, and you will be surrounded by even more people that love you, that love all of us. We no longer need to visit church halls and community centres where a hundred children trample one another to claim a few filthy toys, or travel long distances on public transport so that you can catch a tummy bug in someone else's playroom. You'll have a playroom of your own soon. Heck, we'll all have our own playroom, and our own bedroom even, if your father doesn't sort out his snoring.

You won't remember your time in London if we fall in love with our new surroundings and forget to return, but we will have so many photos, so many stories to tell you, and your mummy still remembers what she was wearing on her fifth birthday, so you can bet she'll fill you in on every last detail of this remarkable year and two months you’ve spent here with us.

While it’s fresh though, let me fill you in on your fourteenth month, which you celebrated by being an even lovelier baby than you were last month. You already know your own mind, and you are constantly asserting yourself in new and bigger ways. Now when you are about to do something you know you shouldn't, you give me a meaningful look, wag your finger at me and say NA! before dipping your head down to bite my nipple. There are few contrabands you enjoy more than a nipple bite. I'm just grateful you give me fair warning now before you indulge.

If we don’t give you what you want (usually for lack of understanding), or if the world doesn’t work in the way that you expect or hope, you get a pained expression, hold your breath and go all red and shaky, which sometimes culminates in a little head-to-floor action, but mostly it results in me trying not to smile, because I want you to know that I take you very seriously.


You've developed an acute sense of empathy, and you remember to feed me and your father an equal amount of blanket lint which you painstakingly harvest from one of our throws for this purpose. One day you were drinking milk when suddenly you sat up, pinched my nipple and held your thumb and forefinger to my lips in an act of generosity that you later repeated with your father. You've also pinched invisible food off your tongue in order to retroactively share your good fortune with us. I find this more endearing than disturbing, though I think your father might lean the other way.

You've appropriated the word 'nana' (once indicative of your desire for bananas) to express hunger, so that if your father is looking after you on Saturday morning while I try to sleep a bit longer, he knows exactly when you'd like your breakfast. You're still using 'deedee' as your primary signifier, though you like to point to various objects around the house to hear me call them by name so that you can repeat an approximation of what you’ve heard. So 'Timmy' becomes 'Tee' and 'Hello' becomes 'Ah Oh', the latter of which you use often and in the right context too. You know what a phone is for, and you love to place objects (sometimes a phone, sometimes not) next to your ear to see if anyone is on the other end. You have even lifted your hand to your head and enquired 'Ah Oh?' of your open palm, which is pretty cute, I have to say.

I think too that you must love me, and not only in the way that a person dependent on someone for food loves that someone. Once we were at the duck pond and you were sat next to your two closest baby friends, the three of you in highchairs all in a row, when suddenly you leaned your torso towards me and I leaned towards you and put my arms around you, expecting for you to resist the brief imprisonment of my affection, except you put your little arms as far around me as they would go and lay your head against my shoulder, and we stayed like that for a little while. It was lovely, and I think you were trying to tell me that you were happy.

In terms of surprises, you had two in store for us this month - one good and one terrifying. Let's get the scary one out of the way so that we can end this letter on a good note, yes?

A few evenings ago, you woke up soon after we'd put you in your cot, and as it was your father's turn to look in on you (let's be honest - between the hours of seven and ten, it's always your father's turn), I sent him in to see if he could soothe you back to sleep. Instead, he began calling for me in a voice I'd never heard before, and in a way that made my legs turn to rubber.

We met at the door to the bedroom, where you lay in your father's arms, your face covered in blood.

It took me a millisecond to work out that you had a nosebleed, and thank goodness I had chronic nosebleeds as a child or we might have called an ambulance. We did call the NHS direct line just to see if the bleed was linked to something more serious, but sometimes a nosebleed is just a nosebleed. And I will never say 'just' in relation to blood ever again, when it comes to you, because I'm still trying to scrape my blood pressure off the ceiling where it stuck when I heard your father call for me like that and I thought something unthinkable had happened to you. I’d really like to minimise those kinds of surprises, if at all possible.

The nice surprise took place last week, when I watched you let go of the armchair and take two small steps towards the coffee table, which you touched like it was 'home free' in a game of hide-and-seek. You've taken thirty such unaided, forward-moving steps since that day, in various configurations and for various reasons, and each time you do, I am as proud as I was the very first time I saw you walk. This event, this walking business, was surprising not only because you pulled it out of seemingly nowhere, but because of how natural it looked on you. Something you've never done before, and you already look like you've been doing it your whole life, which has amounted to fourteen wonderful months, to the day.

I'm sorry these letters don't hang together better, Anaconda. Your mummy still exists in a perpetual fog, though hopefully that will change soon, now that we've finally come to our senses and are moving somewhere with a proper support system in place. It's also the place your father and I were married. We didn't know then that one day in the near-future we'd be returning to that small, cobblestoned village with a tiny boo (you!) in tow.

Happy fourteenth month, darling. I love you more than I know how to say.

Hartley: Thirteen Months

So, you little monkey: thirteen months today! You sure know how to grow up. I thought we’d never reach a year, and now look at us – one month over the 1-year mark and still going strong!

I forgot to mention in my last newsletter that your father taught you to do something very funny and, at times, dangerous. He once lifted you into the air and shouted ROUGHHOUSING! before setting you back down on the bed, where you paused from a seated position and then fell backwards with a kind of ‘timbre!’ fluidity. Wham! Which you still do to this day - just straight back, wherever you happen to be, which is usually the bed. I say ‘usually’ because now you sometimes remember ROUGHHOUSING! and I can see it in your little face, that ROUGHHOUSING! look you get, moments before you hurl yourself backwards onto the hardwood floor. And then you scream.

You did a bunch of ROUHHOUSING! on the bed yesterday, and then you demanded we take a look at The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle, which is your favourite book in the entire world. You didn’t want to read the book – you just wanted to skip straight to the part where I say BIG FAT CATERPILLAR while squeezing your little tummy like you are the big fat caterpillar, except now you will just flip open to any old page and then tickle your own belly with your little fingers. Thank goodness I can often read your mind, because otherwise the joke might have gone amiss, and then you would realise with horror that we do not always share the same thoughts.

Well, you are a tiny bit aware of this fact, as is evidenced by the little storms you sometimes create when you don’t get your way, usually because we simply can’t understand what you’re after. You don’t just flap your arms in frustration anymore – you follow through with crying and a flurry of insistent words that must mean something to you, though we don’t have an English/Angry Little Chick dictionary and so can only listen patiently until you’re satisfied we’ve heard you out. These words you make up are not exclusive to tantrums and you can often be heard repeating sounds in complex patterns I find myself saying out loud to your father, who says them back to me, and oh you can imagine the passionate embraces that result after you go to bed, with a lead up like MAma, MAma…ma…ma…ma….MAma, MAma, &ct.

Usually, though, I can follow your little train of thought as it pertains to sounds that seem like words, or words that are only sounds. I used to think that ‘NAna!’ was your very first word, because you would say it over and over again until I gave you a bit of banana to eat, and then every time you wanted banana, you would find me wherever I happened to be and repeat ‘NAna!’ and ‘NaNAna!’ until I set you up in your high chair with some naNAna. But then one day you asked for ‘NAna!’ and it became clear that it wasn’t banana you were after but a packet of pureed broccoli, pear and peas (I know, but it’s what you like). So now you just shout NANA! NANAAANA! whenever you’re hungry, and we’re back to guessing at what it is you might like to eat.

Likewise, you don’t only refer to your friend Leila (pronounced ‘Lila’) as LEILA! LEILA! Any little person you quite like you’ve assigned the name LEILA! to, and I’ve given up explaining that no, that baby is not Leila, because I know you know full well that it’s just easier to adapt existing words to a variety of contexts than to try and learn hundreds of new words. I am hoping that you learn at least one or two other words from the English dictionary so that I also know when you want to go out for a bit of air, or have some milk, which at the moment you indicate by snaking your little arm into my top and pinching my nipple as hard as you can while hyperventilating and laughing your stuttering anaconda laugh.

I’m not even safe on the sofa anymore, as you can clamber up there by holding onto the buttons of the futon roll I sleep on now, your face buried as you wiggle your back legs to gain purchase, and suddenly there you are, on my lap, your hand groping around in my bra for your milk. Luckily you are very good at the dismount now, and can exit the sofa without injuring your face or head.



You have the best comedic timing of any baby I’ve ever met, and you’d have to see yourself to know what I’m talking about. I should really have something ready to record you at these times, because these little moments of yours are worth keeping, and showing to the judges on X-Factor when you invariably try out for the show with your stand-up routine. I promise I will not let your father help you write your jokes.

You are one hundred percent pure joy, and I am having the best time with you, even in spite of the fact that you are also one hundred percent bonkers. I promise you that I will try not to panic every time you shout incoherently at me when I leave a room if you promise to try not to panic so much when I go to the kitchen to make a cup of coffee, or your lunch. Deal?

Happy lucky thirteen, Juicyconda.

Love, love, love, love,

MAma

Hartley: Eleven Months

Each time I approach this letter, I see a vaster space ahead of me, as though I must flesh you out from the beginning, and I find that I am set further back than I was one month ago. You are not the sum of last month’s parts plus a few extras – you are like the chrysalis in your favourite story book, except you are in the constant process of evolving into something even more beautiful than the time before.

You are in your eleventh month now, and I can’t believe that it’s been almost an entire year since you began. I still remember our first few days together in hospital – you were so quiet, and the midwives would pause in their rotations to comment on how unusually pretty you were for a boy, or how you seemed already wise. I used to think these were just the things that people said to new mothers, but to this day we are approached by all sorts of strangers (a cultural anomaly in this country) who tell me what an unequivocally lovely, good-natured and happy baby you seem.

At the risk of seeming biased, you are still the only baby I know who shows an obvious aptitude for relating to other human beings, and across a wide scope at that. This is something you couldn’t possibly have learned from me, as I instinctively, if imperceptibly, withdraw from most social situations, deeming myself too awkward to navigate even the simplest exchange. You, on the other hand, will look straight into someone’s face and smile beatifically while reciting all the (non-)words in your roster in an attempt to make contact.


You adore babies of all sizes, and will reach for their faces or knees with your chubby arm outstretched, though these other children never share your enthusiasm, and often turn on their heel to bid you a rude farewell. This doesn’t faze you, though. In a room full of toddlers, you race around on your hands and knees, running full tilt at one child and then another in an attempt to join in, even if you don’t always understand the purpose of the assembly. This fills me with love and admiration, but also fear, as the last thing I want is for you to reach out to someone only to experience the sting of rejection. This is where I have to be careful to keep my own issues separate from what I teach you about the world.

You have mastered the art of imitation now, and will do things on command if you feel like it, such as ‘fish’ (where you pop your mouth silently open and closed like a fish gasping for air, except sometimes you put a sound behind it and it becomes ‘ba ba ba ba’) or ‘clap clap clap’ (which you did of your own accord one day, without any prompting from anyone). You will also twist your lips in imitation of me (a trick Daddy can’t even do) and burble your bottom lip with your finger, which I encourage you to do often, as it’s such a sweet and silly thing. You hit all the different buttons on our record player to keep things fresh, and when you find a new song, you do a bendy-knee dance and grin at me over your shoulder to make sure I am watching you.

Your little gum line on the top, which I used to tickle you just to get a glimpse of, is now broken by the shiny white buds of teeth – four new ones in all. At first I thought it was just the one, but three others were only a day behind, and now when you smile I’m not sure what it is I see - a baby hippo sometimes, and sometimes just these teeth, which are yours, and which I’m still getting used to. You sometimes grind these together, but it’s not a worry for now. You did something else that used to worry me – knock your own head against the wall or the floor, or any other hard surface – until I realised you were just experimenting with sensation. You’ve mostly abandoned this habit, I’m happy to say.


But these teeth! You often bite my nipples now, dragging them across your teeth and laughing at my reactions, however discouraging I think they might be. At these times I have to stop feeding you, and if it’s night time, I’ll ask Daddy to help me get you off to sleep some other way. I intend to feed you until you are at least a year old, and secretly I was hoping to feed you beyond this deadline, but you will have to stop this painful habit or Daddy may not grant us our extension (your Daddy believes that with weaning will come magical nights of unbroken sleep, bless).

You’ve mostly overcome your fear of strangers, though occasionally you’ll decide that a friendly face seems sinister after all, and then no amount of soothing and raisins will abate your red-faced wailing. The most benign image can morph into a sudden threat, and the baby channel embodies a veritable minefield of such triggers. You used to love those smiley faced shapes that jump from a high shelf and do a silly song and dance, but now every time you see them, you scream and flag me down for help. I don’t ever belittle your fears, and cuddle you for as long as you like, though I will try to help you conquer the ones that are unavoidable (like when you see me wash dishes; I know, it scares me too).


Aside from these small setbacks, you are still fearless in your exploration of the world, and can now clamber up onto the sofa if you see something worth your reach, holding onto anything and everything in your bid to remain upright and mobile. You follow a schedule of your own devising when you play with your things, and have even discovered a shortcut in making your pop-up toys pop-up (rather than fiddling with buttons and switches you simply bash it against the floor until the trap doors fling open at once). We live in a tight space for a family of three, but you know precisely how much weight you can put on any given piece of furniture, whether it slips or rolls, and how much force it takes to pull over a plastic container of giant blocks. You do these things well because I’ve given you the time and space to learn, which is difficult for a natural hoverer like me.


This is why I never take credit for the way you’ve turned out. Your joyful disposition, your affability towards others and your unquenchable thirst for new experiences are just a part of who you are, and who you’ve always been. We’ve all been extraordinarily lucky in that you were born to a set of parents who recognised this potential in you and wanted nothing more than to help you unlock it, simply by loving you and waiting patiently for you to one day discover these traits yourself. You are a marvelous baby, and I feel so lucky, so disbelievingly grateful, that you are mine.

There is so much more to tell, and a big change is on the horizon – one that will alter all our lives forever. But it’s still a ways off, and I want this letter, and every letter that follows, to celebrate you, and you alone. I love you with all my heart, Chicken. That will never, ever change.

Happy eleventh month, baby.