Nuisance phone calls

Harry has, from a very early age, had a thing about telephones. He loves playing with mobiles and, if he gets the chance, the house phone.

At my mum’s, Harry’s even been known to call people using the redial button (which flashes green). On one occasion, my sister thought she was the victim of a nuisance phone call; it turned out it was just Harry heavy breathing on the other end of the line.

Now he’s started to talk more, he’s even more determined to get hold of the phone.

Last week, Melissa called me while I was at work and Harry managed to wrestle the phone off her. Harry and I then had a conversation of sorts, with Harry chatting away on the other end of the line. I’m not sure what he was trying to tell me but he was very excited.

It struck me again how quickly Harry is growing up – there I was sat in work talking to my son on the phone. It was another one of those ‘pinch yourself’ moments.

What’s even more entertaining, though, is watching Harry talking to somebody else on the phone. Harry’s obviously been studying me using the phone because, like me, he doesn’t stand still for a minute, preferring instead to walk around the room chatting away and nodding his head intently like an old man.

The problem comes when you try and take the phone off him; he just doesn’t want to let it go. Sometimes, for a quiet life, I let him carry on talking – goodness knows what Melissa will say when the bill arrives.

Full time dad

I’m currently recovering after spending four full days looking after Harry on my own.

Melissa decided to get away for a couple of days with her mum and sister, leaving me in charge. Now I’ve done the odd day here and there, but never for that length of time so I was a little bit nervous.

I was also slightly concerned about Harry’s reaction. Although he’s not particularly clingy, I did wonder what effect his mum being away for four nights would have on him.

Thankfully, I needn’t have worried. Harry did say “Mummy, gone” a few times while shrugging and raising his hands, but that was about it.

My tactics were simple: tire him out as thoroughly as possible during the day so that he would sleep well at night. This seemed to work pretty effectively – although the fine weather helped – and I even found time to do a bit of housework just to prove to Melissa that I haven’t forgotten how to use the washing machine and iron.
I did get quite a bit of help along the way from my mum and nan, who were on hand to provide tea, cake, support and so on when I wanted some respite.

There were also a couple of minor disasters along the way. On the first evening, while I was wrestling with a zip that had got stuck on one of his coats, Harry managed to find a way through the gate at the bottom of the stairs and was half way up before I managed to grab him.

One another occasion, he managed to get hold of some of Melissa’s make-up and was in the process of colouring our bedroom carpet before I stopped him.

All in all, though, it went very smoothly even if it was tiring. On Sunday afternoon I took Harry to Ty Mawr for a walk. Half way round, Harry decided he wanted to go on my shoulders. It was a warm day and quite hard work. When we reached the car park, Harry wanted to go around again – which meant my shoulders took some more punishment. I’ll say this though, it was more enjoyable than going to the gym.

And the hardest part about the whole experience? Going to back to work.

Now Harry’s a bit older, playing with him is a lot more interesting. At the moment, one of his favourite activities is playing with large building blocks – a bit like giant Lego.

In recent weeks, Harry has learned how to put the blocks together and is now creating fairly complicated – and often quite tall – structures.

This isn’t without its hazards, though. I’ve lost count of the number of times Harry has built a tower only to push it over in my direction. He obviously thinks watching me scramble out of the way of falling blocks is entertaining. As I’ve said before, being a dad does nothing for your dignity.

Anyway, there was one particularly exciting moment last week. One evening while playing with Harry, I built an aeroplane (a very basic one, I should add) out of the blocks.

Harry thought this was great and was soon running around the room with the aeroplane making a ‘brrrrr’ noise.
The following morning, Melissa and I were sat having a cup of tea after breakfast while Harry was playing on the floor with the blocks and, much to my surprise and delight, he built his own aeroplane.

I was truly amazed, not to mention very proud, and spent the rest of the day battling with that ‘I want to tell everyone about my brilliant child’ syndrome that bores everybody else silly.

Since then I’ve been busy trying to encourage Harry to build giant castles as well as aeroplanes but he doesn’t seem to share my enthusiasm. Instead he wants to build aeroplanes and then fly them at my head. Melissa says it serves me right.