LEARNING FROM LOUISE

 Louise taught me one thing…be careful what you say or do in front of a toddler. They’re little sponges, they soak up everything and squirt it right back at you. She was 17 months when she flew in with her parents in July for the summer holidays.

The parents needed some respite from their hectic jobs and active toddler and so I gladly stepped up and took charge of her. Pitching my standards unnaturally high, I decided to keep her in a state of squeaky cleanliness. In a single day, I would tote her upstairs to the bathroom, several times, on knees that began to click and tremble, to give her bottom a quick wash and…gradually my energy began to drain and trickle out and I started going …`ahh ahh’… expelling sounds of effort and struggle as I heaved this wriggling toddler, all 9 kilos+ of her into the washbasin, where she turned and twisted and grabbed whatever was within her reach, the soap dispenser, the soap tray in the shape of a white pearly shell, a bottle of lotion, an electric toothbrush etc etc. and a fierce battle ensued which left me puffing and panting. Soon after, whenever we approached the bathroom for those ablutions, Miss Quick Learner beat me to it and went…`AHH AHH AHH AHH’.…  mimicking my suffering….Gosh did I really sound like that…cawing like some aged crow? So from then on I kept my lips tightly pursed as I lifted and heaved and hefted this little mimic and even gulped down the puffs and pants.

She was also drawn like a magnet to things forbidden…Say…`No!’… and and she’d scramble up the stairs and as I tried to seize her from behind, she’d cling to the rails like a limpet…Say…`No!’…and she was like an octopus, all hands, reaching out and sweeping up knick knacks on low shelves and coffee tables…Say…`No!’…and she’d grab the alarm clock and the table thermometer and the remote control for the air-conditioner and boxes of pills on our bedside tables with hands as swift as a magician’s with me running behind, waggling my forefinger and going…`No, no no. She would waggle her finger back at me and grin supposedly in agreement and after the third…`No no no’…she would clench the item in a tight fist, frown and let out a tirade of utterances, loaded with meaning but unintelligible to me, angry and scolding, as if to say…`NO NO NO RIGHT BACK AT YOU! I’M KEEPING IT!’…

What delighted me most was her dance routine. She danced to music by buckling her knees and going up and down with the beat, lifting her arms and bringing them down, drawing wriggly lines all the way down like some eastern dancer and then lifting her elbows and moving them from side to side …`Where did she pick this up from?’…I asked Annie…`Probably from the crèche. She just came home one day and when the music was on she wriggled her bottom and moved her arms,’ said Annie.  And Miss Eastern Dancer commanded an audience with her cool moves at the grocer’s, while sitting in her pram, much to the delight of everyone.

Ah yes…then there were the nursery rhymes in song on Cocomelon on You Tube. While her parents had escaped their only child and went off on holiday to an island, Louise and I went mad with the songs at full blast, morning, noon and night when we didn’t go off to the butcher’s, grocer’s or the park. When the parents came back at the end of the week, the house was rocking with BaBa Black Sheep and Blue Sheep and Red Sheep and The Wheels On the Bus Going Round And Round and she had learnt to press her finger to her lips when it went…` the mummies on the bus go shhh shh shh’ when the babies on the bus start crying and then she walked around the house shhh shooing everyone.

Then…WHOA!!!!!…it went out of control, took off on its own trajectory and the house was like a disco, throbbing with Cocomelon…Old Mac Donald’s four-leggeds going…MOO MOO MOO and BAA BAA BAA and OINK OINK OINK…and grandpa shark and grandma shark and the whole clan of sharks going…DOO DOO DOODOO… and Laurent, Louise’s French-speaking father, walking around the house and singing…baby shark DOO DOO DOODOO. On the last day before they left and the music was blasting again on Louise’s request, I raised my voice above the din and said…`Hey Annie do you need the link for Cocomelon?’…And she, in the heat of the beat, glared at me, daggers flashing in her eyes…`I’m not going to play any of this CRAP at home.’

They left, and in their wake, they left a house totally transformed, all décor and knick knacks and bric-a-bracs, breakables and unbreakables,  touchables and untouchables were piled up on the dining room table like an untidy display for an indoor garage sale and the walls still trembling with Cocomelon. The two of us, just back from the airport sat slouched, he in his recliner and I in the armchair and gradually we picked ourselves up and straightened the house out and put things away and felt the emptiness seep in. A day later Annie rang and we chatted and amidst all that, she said…` We played her songs.’…What songs?’…`Cocomelon.’…`I thought you said they were CRAP.’…`Yes they are…but…GOOD CRAP!’

So my friends that’s all for now and come back for the next post on our Hungarian trip.

Cheers!