No Mr. Dickens, greater

You are not at all what we expected.

A screaming, sobbing newborn is what we most likely envisaged being handed to us. The reality was a silence, a stand-off. Your parents being no exception, you stared everyone out, the only sign of anything bordering uncertainty being the occasional slow blink, eyelids peeling themselves back to the point of impossibility to let the entire world in. And out.

Weeks have passed and we’re become more and more familiar. An evolution is taking place; I now know nibbling on your chin and neck makes you laugh a tongue flapping laugh, you’ve learned how to burrow your way into the sweetest spot under my neck, little head butts clearing a path towards sleep, and I know how much you enjoy feasting on your own fingers, often with an entire fist falling fowl to your gummy jaws, it’s limited dimensions being all that stops you gorging on everything up to the elbow.

Your world is limited but you rule it, nothing disturbs or upsets you here. You seem to know this is your home. Your babbling, while frequent, is contained to gurgles that are at first wrapped up and then let loose in more combinations of vowels than are imaginable.

It’s scary to contemplate the things you might say to us were you able, all fierce and bold and sure. Until then, every day you tell it like it is in your own way.

It is ridiculous to call it such, but you possess an unusual confidence. Maybe it’s better described as an inherent comfort with how you are and what you do, in your own 7 week old universe. You lie content in your surroundings, yelping instructions when something is not as it should be, smiling and laughing when it suits you to make us do your bidding.

I wonder when does that comfort fade in people, when might you become as unsure or uncertain as the rest of us. Never, I hope.

No, you are most certainly not at all what we expected.

Yes I know the music is playing, but...

Again big thanks to Jo, who it transpires, actually did leave it behind in Galway after all, but was too scared to tell me. She magically rallied a fleet of friends and assistants to recover it and it arrived here during the week. Big thanks to them also.

It's heavy enough to kill a man or break a toe, or break the toe of a dead man if you so wish, which are the real criteria awards should be judged on.

It's currently employed as an 'oooh-look-please-stop-crying' but I reckon it'll work it's true magic as something to chew on when she starts teething.



The Irish blog award category best personal blog was sponsored by Microsoft Ireland’s Developer & Platform Group.

You won't like me when I'm angry

It’s a pet peeve.

‘Who does she look like?’

She doesn’t actually have to look like anyone, does she? Now, granted, a combination of genetics and a limitation on the number of variations a face can have will result in her displaying some similarities to others, but there is no written rule that she needs to have her parentage identifiable by her ears, or chin, or hair. As faaaaabulous as her follicle abundance may be.

If the opposite were the case surely we would be walking around bumping into Adam ‘n Eve lookalikes all day long. Fig leaves et al. It would give Tiger Woods a great excuse though.

Anyway, I digress.

Mango does in fact look like someone. While the untrained eye might see some of her mother or myself in her, having spent countless hours observing the little creature I can pinpoint a more accurate doppelganger.

As the female young of the species are wont to be, she is often dressed in pink. When she occasionally decides that it is time to scream with all the fury that her 10lb body can muster, she turns a delightful shade of red from top to toe. Coupled with her American newsreader head of black hair, she turns into the spitting image of a figure from my childhood.

The incredible hulk.

With her entire body one bright red colour, a mop of black hair, a face turned upside down with rage, and fists clenched in front of her hunched torso, my daughter turns into a miniature pink version of the incredible bloody hulk.

The only notable difference of course, is that you can’t help but like her.

Even when she’s angry.