MagicMum's daddy blogger Colm O'Regan on... the baby 'DANGER ZONE'

MagicMum’s Daddy blogger Colm O’Regan has reached that inevitable stage when even the most seemingly innocuous things around the house are viewed as dangerous, hostile objects.

The radiator cap, letters from the bank, his stylish back gravel – all are now potential hazards as baby Ruby starts to explore the big, crazy world around her…

Gnarled, hairy man-toes

I know it’s a bit of a cliché, but it’s true: babies really do make you look at the world again and see the wonder. And it doesn’t have to be a breathtaking thing like an Alpine meadow or a sunset or a pride of lions taking down a gnu. It could be something very simple. Like your own toes.

The sunny weather has meant my toes have made an appearance in daylight.  My daughter is agog. Watching her, I think, “Actually maybe she’s onto something here. Toes are weird.” Not babies’ toes. They’re just awujawujawujawoo, but adult toes, especially gnarled, hairy man-toes. She seems to explore them as if they are not connected to me at all. And the longer I look at them, the more I have to agree. They seem more a separate organism – the Ten Wise Men of the Floor. Sometimes I even sort of wiggle them to give her the Wise Men’s response.

It is nice to see the world in this way. I find myself staring at a dog and thinking “What on earth must she think that is?”

This lunatic planet

And of course there is that old favourite – the radiator cap. Turns out we’ve been looking at radiators all wrong. If you put your head at floor level, a radiator takes on the appearance of a mysterious alien technology. Maybe she thinks it’s her best chance to get off this lunatic planet.

The flip side of her discovering the world, item by item while we watch her, is that for every mundane object that she delights in – empty fizzy-water bottles, any important correspondence from the bank – there is a new danger to be discovered.

Hasbro’s Little Miss Cord

It’s cable at the moment. Not Tomy’s My First Flex or Hasbro’s Little Miss Cord, just honest to goodness extension leads, power cables, anything long and stringy and attached to the mains. We’ll be encouraging her to play with some of the toys that are designed specifically for children.  But she will put down Mr. Ducky Duckworth – our name for it – and head straight for the one cable we forgot to tidy away.

She doesn’t seem to play with the cable in a childish way – she handles it like an electrician might. I half expect her to turn to us and say “And did ye put this in or was it here when ye bought the house?” She’ll trace the cable to its roots and then give us a look as if to suggest this a bigger job than she thought and she’ll get to it when she gets a chance. But first, she has to stop by the other job she’s on ‘out on the Kylemore Road’.

So cables have to be tidied away. Corners obviously are another no-no. And loose things with a diameter measuring smaller than a baby’s mouth. Gradually the house is rising up a few inches. Nothing can be left anywhere now. Like New Orleans, everything has to be above a high water mark that’s constantly changing.  

A collection of bite-sized hazards

The gravel out back will probably have to go. I used to look on it as a charming feature in an urban yard, adding a touch of class, turning broken Inchicore concrete into the driveway of our summer-house in Provence.

Now it’s just a collection of bite-sized hazards.

Gradually, the unsafe parts of our life are having to be dismantled. We didn’t know they were unsafe at the time. They were just objects. But I can’t look around now without seeing danger everywhere.  What had been a benign home now appears jagged and loose and choke-y. It reminds me of those paranoia-inducing ads for anti-bacterial sprays where the voiceover says: “You may have cleaned the dirt you can see. But what about the germs you can’t?” And I’m thinking, “listen buddy, I’m just focusing on the visible stuff at the moment. The ‘germs you can’t’ will have to be filed under ‘ah that’ll toughen up her immune system’”.

Counter-terrorism

Her capacity for finding the hazards in any situation makes me think that babies have a huge counter-terrorism role to play. Dogs are great but they can only find something if it smells dangerous. But only a baby will find something that is completely innocuous and identify it as a potential hazard. Picture the scene – you are in an airport queue and an adorable baby just crawls by. Then she stops and starts picking at the zip of one bag and getting animated about what’s inside. The bag is searched and found to contain explosives hidden in the handle of a saucepan that could be pulled down on top of herself.

I know this will never end though. Currently we have a bit of breathing space because she hasn’t discovered that the soother has to come out of her mouth before she can put anything else inside. But she will figure that out and it’ll be like in ‘I Robot’ where the robot suddenly gets the red light that says “I am now a fully sentient mentalist”.

There’ll never be no dangers. She’ll get to a reasonable age, say 43 or something and just when I think she’s safe she’ll go off base-jumping just to get the ‘awesome drone footage’.

I’d better get back to her. She’s should be safe enough on the ground next to… WHAT IN THE NAME OF… HOW DID YOU? WHAT EVEN IS THAT?

At least she keeps us on our toes.