Cat-like reflexes…(aka Parenting superpowers)

I made it to a second post! More importantly, we’ve made it unscathed through the first three weeks,. In fact, three weeks ago at the time of writing, we were making our trip home from the hospital. Thinking of it like that puts all of the visits, gifts and mini achievements (more on those in a later post) into pretty sharp perspective. That’s a lot of stuff in a short space of time!

As I mentioned in my first post, this is an attempt to look at the more positive side of being a first-time parent. With that in mind, I thought I’d take a quick look at one of the many, many positives that has come with her arrival – the development of skills I certainly didn’t have three weeks ago!

Being the comic book fan that I am, it wasn’t a huge jump to think of these as new powers. Not quite the same as being bitten by the proverbial radioactive insect, but new and improved neverthless. It’s also worth noting that not all of these powers are either a) useful or b) 100% effective!

Parenting Superpower 1 – improved hearing skills (ish)

The first thing I noticed was that I have become more and more attuned to listening out for cries. There is nothing like your baby crying to tug at the heart strings. However, for reasons unknown, I regularly find myself running upstairs declaring “Is she okay? I just heard her cry,” much to my wife’s bemusement. This has happened a lot. I’m hoping it’s a trial phase and will actually be more effective than our baby monitor in future.

Parenting Superpower 2 – increased reflexes

As the title points out, this has been a notable change since turning 32 (which coincidentally is the same day our adorable girl was born – best present ever!). I consider myself to have pretty decent reflexes (I have been known to pull off some ridiculous saves on the 5-a-side pitch, but equally let in some howlers). Since Beatrice was born, I have been catching dropped objects alarmingly quickly (ranging from recently sterilised bottles to a mug out of the cupboard), but I have also had to evade projectile faeces repeatedly!

So much so that again, I have developed a sixth sense for it. In fact, today, I deftly leapt to one side to avoid the carnage in Mothercare’s baby changing room this afternoon (actually impressing my wife!)! Her (Beatrice’s of course!)party trick seems to be to shoot streams of mustardy brown at great speed over longer distances than you would imagine possible. It is particularly fun to dodge whilst maintaing the hold on her legs! I’m not quite at Spiderman levels of agility as yet, but fingers crossed I’m going to be unstoppable in goal next season.

Of course, it doesn’t always work…I like to think of this as Beatrice’s damning statement about England’s performance against Pakistan on Wednesday (she’s already a keen Test Match Special listener…). It takes the pain away from yet another washing machine cycle.

I’m sure more powers will be revealed in due course. I shall be writing up my version of Rio 2016- the Nappylmpics in my next post in celebration of the start of the Olympics, be sure to have a look to see if you can break any of my world records!