No room in the fridge


My wife continues to bake; with the help of everyone at the office, we made it through half the cookies from last night, but there are still the other two dozen, along with a roasted raspberry bake and a pasta dish two of our friends very kindly brought round. There’s almost no space in the fridge to fit any booze.

Still, I feel very lucky. Rather than conforming to stereotype and crying all night, our daughter allowed us to sleep from 1 until 8, so I did a good impression of a normal human being when I went into the office today. I would have preferred to stay home longer, but work never sleeps and I only get two days paternity leave, so you have to ration your time. These are precious days with our little baby, but for most of them she is asleep, so I guess I should spend some time making money to keep her in the lifestyle to which she’s yet to be accustomed.

Today I decided it was time to sign up for Spanish classes. One of my resolutions for the last few years has been to learn Spanish, but I have never done anything about it. Well, last night I read El Pais to my daughter (an interview with the 2012 motorcycle world champion), and that may have kickstarted my mind into seeking some improving activities. However, learning Spanish in Singapore is a slightly risky proposition: for a start, what accent will I end up with? You might think it’s a touch over-ambitious for a new father to commit to learning a language from scratch, but we’ve has this baby for almost a week now: at some point you have to get on with your life again.

Some of my friends are a little sceptical, but we will see. When I gain the ability to ask most of the inhabitants of Latin America the way to the railway station, I think the lessons will have proved their worth.

Our daughter is suffering from a little bit of jaundice, a common enough complaint for young children. The cure for this is to expose her to sunlight twice a day, rotating her body to get an even amount of ultraviolet across her skin. It feels a bit like I’m the commander of a rotisserie chicken, carefully making sure my child is basted correctly. Of course, thoughts like that are extra worrying when my wife has been eating roast chickens since I got her home from the hospital. If I catch her brushing gravy onto our little one, there will be some discussion to be had.

And so to bed. I’ve had a couple of beers, and this weekend showed me that one thing you don’t want to attempt is a nappy change when you’re half-cut, so I’m praying the Foremanbaby sleeps peacefully until morning comes.


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