Locking wills with a one-year-old

My nephew is so cute, he's a regular heart-stealer. He's also a veritable ball of energy and can be quite a handful to manage.

Being still new to this uncle thing, my duties during my visit was limited to watching him for 15-30 minute patches at a time to give some respite to the people doing the real looking-after. And believe me, they needed that time to catch their breath as this little kid needs to be watched every second. I received lessons in parenting that I'd rather not have had till I'm, say, 28 years old, but hey, it was worth it.

I wonder if somebody has written a book titled "How to keep a baby amused" or something like that, because boy, I suck at it. I'm afraid my brain is too limited to think up funny noises/faces/games for a baby in sufficient variety. A typical event would be, I toss him a ball and he deftly tosses it back. Feeling hope that I might engage him for a few minutes with it, I toss it back but this time he comes to me and reaches out with the ball in his hand. But if I try to take it from him, he grips it tighter and grins. Then he jumps around a bit and throws the ball to various corners of the room and chases after it himself. Much more fun than playing with Uncle Prashanth. Hrumph.

I always wondered why parents are so stubborn. Well, now I know. See, taking care of a baby is all about out-stubborning him. Especially when it comes to eating or drinking. Oftentimes you'll have to spend half an hour just to get a few spoonfuls into his mouth. In some cases, though, no amount of stubbornness helps. If you hold the baby when he wants to be let down, he'll squirm and wriggle and twist and kick until you put him back on the floor. And babies are deceptively strong, you better watch where those little feet are kicking!!

I wonder how babies develop a sixth sense for going after the most expensive and breakable objects. I guess they're really good at reading our faces in reaction to stuff they do, and have a precise idea of what they oughtn't do, and then go ahead and do exactly that. When my nephew starts making his way toward me with that wide grin on his face and a mischievous glint in his eye, I know I have 5 seconds to figure out what he's after, and you can be sure it's not the comfort of my arms. The odds are he's after my glasses, or my cell phone, or the TV remote. In fact, if you give him a toy cell phone and a real cell phone, he'll easily choose the real one. Give him a cheaper model and a more expensive model and he'll definitely pick up (and drop :P) the costlier one.

It's nice, though, that I now feel comfortable around the baby, can carry him around, talk to him a bit, etc. as I'm notorious for being clueless around little kids. I still haven't got the hang of the tricks of the trade, though - for example, I spent three minutes unsuccessfully trying to wipe his nose. Then my s-i-l's brother came, pointed toward the ceiling and said "look at the fan!". The baby looked up, and displaying remarkable reaction time, he wiped the kids nose before he knew it. Darn it! Wish I'd thought of that!

As fun as it was, I'm happy enough to leave the parenting to the parents and get back to Chennai. Parenting is hard! Whew!

Cheers,
Prashanth.