The baby in our house will be two
years old tomorrow and for the first time since we started our family, there is
a birthday in the house being celebrated by the youngest and there isn’t (a) a
baby on the way or (b) an infant in the family.
It is a strange feeling. It is a great
feeling. But enough about me. This post is about our little Bread Bin.
We don’t call him Bread Bin. Really we don’t. When Brendan was born, Lovely Liam, in true
mumbling two and a half year old fashion, made “Brendan” sound like Bread Bin.
These days Smallest Boy answers to Chick, Mucky Pup or Fuzzy
Head.
Brendan is what you might call a laid back dude. Always has been. He wakes up with a smile and goes to bed,
mostly, with a smile. Even when he is
upset, it is over and done with very quickly.
As a small baby he loved his sleeps. Once he slept for 16 hours straight and even
the occasional rub of his head wasn’t enough to wake him fully.
He loves to give “stingers” which are high fives in our
house. He likes to torment his Daddy by
kissing me and laughing at his daddy’s mock outrage. I cannot cross my legs as the child boards
them and does his best jockey impersonation.
He is an outdoor child and doesn’t seem to feel the
cold. Something he has in common with
his big brothers. Brendan loves the
swimming pool and will fling himself into the water and my open arms but only
when he has everyone’s attention.
He is a big fan of those brightly coloured snacks from a
well-known baby food manufacturer. And
when he is finished a bag, it is difficult to tell where the child begins and
the snack ends.
His hair is a mad just-out-of-the-bed array of
frizziness. If he stands in the
sunlight, it looks like his hair is on fire.
Brendan is a flirt and thinks nothing of going up to the
next table in a café to say hello to the occupants. He has recently developed a passion for
tractors, lorries and motor bikes. He is
in seventh heaven when the front square in town is occupied by maybe a dozen
bikes as their owners are in having breakfast.
I think it is very fair to say that Smallest Boy is the most
affectionate child in the house. He
loves an “ugg” and a “keeze” at bedtime and is partial to both at any given
time of the day.
When he wants a drink of water he will make a sucking noise
through his teeth and tap whichever body part of mine he can reach. He has stood there patiently tapping away
until he has my attention, which some days, believe me, can be a long
time. If he wants a drink of milk,
however, it has to be from daddy’s “cup cup.”
He is trying hard to speak at the moment and has loads of
unintelligible words but if he can’t get his point across, he thinks nothing of
letting lose a blood curdling scream until he gets what he is after.
He is mad about Shy Boy’s school friend and loves to stand
on the counter top to point him out in a class photograph.
He will spend ages looking at pictures on my phone, in
particular those of his bosom buddy, Juno.
And as can be typical of a child with older siblings, age
appropriate toys are of no interest whatsoever to Brendan. He loves to play Lego and build towers out of
wooden blocks. It is his habit to lift
tea spoons out of the kitchen drawer and use them to dig in the garden.
The title of this post is something of a misnomer as of
course, Brendan is not going to be a baby forever. Even at two years of age, I am doing him a
disservice with this tag. Looking at him
as I was writing this post, I see how tall he is already.
He already has two older brothers who are quite tall for
their age. His daddy is no slouch
either. It looks like Brendan might be
following in their stead.
Imagine that. Little
old me surrounded by fine strapping boys.
I must have done something really really cool in a previous life.
Happy Birthday, Smallest Boy. I am
truly sorry that the day before your second birthday, you needed to visit the doctor
for a cartoon type bandage and your very first anti-biotic due to a fight with
the front door. I promise it will be
made up to you tomorrow.
You’re a little trooper!
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