Getting my teeth into it

Yes that's right loyal readers, Max has his first tooth, teeth to be exact for the second one came a day after the first. They are two little sharp things like flint edges sticking out of his gums. He did exactly the right amount of crying and not sleeping to herald their arrival. He had red cheeks and runny stools. I know that this blog does verge on the coprophilic at times but a good teething nappy is an assault on the senses. The sights, the sounds, the smells and best of all, if your technique is not right, the feel. This will continue in fits and starts for a long time. The first set of teeth should number 24 and they take a couple of years to all come down or up. Shortly followed by a rapid falling out. It strikes me as a really stupid system. I would be delighted if a clever geneticist could splice out the milk teeth gene and trigger the regular teeth gene earlier. Or maybe we could just eliminate the milk teeth and have little baby dentures until the adult teeth started to grow. We also need to seriously consider some form of less intact gum. Even for adults, forcing a blunt piece of ceramic through a perfectly lovely piece of flesh is a bit of a pain. I still have two wisdom teeth to come down and they cause great pain when they decide to make a small advance. At least I am not still wearing nappies, otherwise my caregiver would be in for an awful time.

Max has also had a lovely two weeks in crèche. It is a perfectly splendid place full of bright colours, happy babies and caring staff. So caring infant that their titles are actually edu-carers. I do understand that this is a butchering of the English language to a criminal extent but it is reasonably descriptive. They are part nurses and part teachers. 'Nurchers' might be a better term. They look after Max from about 8:10 until 16:10, that's eight hours a day. That's a lot. Thank all that is good, he loves it. At the weekends we adopt a policy of accelerated learning so that we can balance out the amount of input the crèche edu-carers have. Everyone told us that once he went to crèche he would get loads of infections, colds, coughs and awful diseases. He has. His immune system is working like a fire crew on bonfire night. He is producing mucous and pus and doing it all with a brave face. He is equal to this task and the thing that keeps myself and Ciara going through the day's work is the thought of seeing him at the end of it and seeing his beautiful big smile!

But all of that is not all, he is sitting up properly now, he is reaching for things and he can shake a rattle like the best of us. He is singing to himself, he is talking to himself, he is simply growing up at a rate that frightens. We have resolved to grip the sides and hold on tight!