Now that the world is slowly opening up again, we’ve found our weekends are chockablock with social arrangements till mid-August. As an introvert, I find this mildly overwhelming but also quite lovely. We’ve gone from seeing no humans to all the humans, what feels like overnight. Mostly I love it but a part of me still wants to hide under my duvet. (Though mainly from the children).
This Saturday was different, a free afternoon meant we were going to try and be “productive”. We spent the best part of our day in John Lewis deciding whether our baby’s new car seat really required the “360 spin” feature. (It absolutely does).
We picked the poor sales assistant’s brain asking all the questions you’re meant to ask, then of course I suddenly needed to know exactly how to operate this new bit of kit, requesting that she show me where all the magic buttons are. Recline, recline again, spin, spin more, loosen, tighten, click, un-click..car seats aren’t what they used to be.
“It can’t be that easy. It’s never that easy. She’s making it look easy.” I thought to myself, ignoring the fact it came with instructions and I could probably Google the rest. But we had a real life human helping us and I wanted to embrace this. She was so much nicer than a Youtube video. We even tested Leo in his new possible throne. He didn’t love it. This is all after weeks of comparing and contrasting online. Many minutes of head scratching later, we ended up picking the original one I’d opted for months ago, at the very beginning of our car seat indecision headache. Which is a real thing.
From one case of indecision to another, I recently found myself sat in a baby music class debating whether to wake my sleeping baby up. You know, so he could participate in the pre-paid class carefully curated for his enjoyment and benefit, or let him get the rest he clearly needed.
The first time it happened, I thought it was just a one off. I wasn’t sure what to do when we arrived. He’d only just fallen asleep and had been grumpy beforehand so I was reluctant to wake him. I brought him in, still in his car seat, hoping at any moment the music would wake him.
The thing about BABY classes is, they’re very much designed for parents and their babies. Without an awake baby, you’re just a woman, on a mat, copying an array of movements for absolutely no one’s benefit. I quickly began to feel incredibly awkward. I couldn’t decide what would look weirder, sitting there and just staring at my sleeping baby, or trying as best I could to stay involved/present in the class. I went for a mix. It felt almost wrong and highly unnatural without the little one crawling around next to me. There was a lot of bopping and patting of the thighs. I followed most of the actions whilst intermittently staring at Leo and silently willing him to wake on his own. He eventually did. The relief was palpable.
“YES THANK YOU YES GOOD YOU ARE BACK NOW I CAN LOOK NORMAL AGAIN.”
Leo slept through 90% of all three of his classes last week. That would be Hartbeeps, Jolly Babies and Baby Sensory. I should start some kind of Trip Advisor for baby classes, I spend my mornings running late for any one of these groups.
The Colourful Kind 