Baby Rogenous is now almost 19 months old, so this week I figured it was high time I started indoctrinating him. You can’t afford to waste any time with this sort of thing.
Now, I know what you’re all thinking … but no, I don’t mean politically. I might be a pernicious Leftist, but I’m not that pernicious — he’ll need to be at least two years old before I read him The Communist Manifesto, and I’ll wait until he’s mastered Twinkle Twinkle Little Star before bothering with The Internationale.
Instead, I’ve started him on an area second only in importance to politics — sport. Lesson no.1 was football codes, and I’m delighted to say he passed with flying colours:
(Transcript here if you can’t understand babytalk)
Next week, I think I’ll introduce him to Club Wah’s superb Ashes for the Ignorant series.
Remember Magna Doodles? They’re awesome. A friend of ours gave Baby Rogenous a similar magnetic drawing board the other day, and I couldn’t resist having a crack at it.
Fifteen-month-old Baby is really beginning to talk now, and he’s able to name a handful of animals and make their noises. So I decided I’d make a game of drawing a few creatures for him to identify.
Now, I’m well aware that drawing isn’t a strength of mine … but there are worse people to get stuck playing Pictionary with, I reckon.
Turns out Baby begged to differ when I drew this dog:
He looked at the board; looked up at me; looked back at the board; looked up at me …
“Meow?” he said.
Off I ran to tell E Rogenous my latest hilarious “kids say the darndest things” story. She looked at the board; looked up at me; looked back at the board; looked up at me …
“Is that a nose or a penis?” she said. “And why does its tongue have testicles?”
Baby Rogenous turns six months old next week, and a few days ago the first of his little zoobies popped up through his bottom gum. I was talking to my mother about it on the phone tonight, and she told the following story:
“Oh, here we go — E had better watch out now! When your teeth first came out you used to bite my nipple so hard, and by god it hurt!”
Now, don’t get me wrong: it’s lovely talking to my mum about Baby — he’s her first grandchild and she’s every bit the doting grandmother.
But a little piece of me died when she said “nipple”.
