Yesterday was too much for Leo. I felt bad putting him to bed. He was desperate to sleep and angry at me for trying to get him ready for bed. Today I tried work to his rhythm.
I wanted to get outside and do something, but Leo was enjoying the appartement. So we stayed in, we walked around looking at everything, I drew him a bear while he nibbled the end of the pen and we read one of the Julia Donaldson books. At about 10:30 I popped him into bed and he slept for two hours. He woke up smiling and we continued playing around until lunch.
We're waiting for some new parts to arrive for the high chair (amazingly we have the actual tripp trapp that Leo's mum sat in as a kid), for now we're using a Bumboo. They're recommended for kids up to nine months but Leo's legs are already a squeeze to fit in.
After we've both had lunch we head out to Little Music Makers. I love music but have never had any tallent. I learnt last week that the girl I had violin lessons with as a kid went on to become professional and perform with the worlds best orchestras, so I certainly can't blame the tuition. I love to sing, but that's almost exclusively done in the privacy of my own home (or occasionally at a bar). I'm not an extrovert and the idea of sitting in a room with a bunch of strangers singing kids songs is toe cringingly painful. But I also can't stay in the house any longer and most importantly maybe Leo gets something out of it.
The concept is pretty simple. Kids need music. It's something that happens organically. Singing to a kid is fun, they react. We commented the other day that we're singing so much now we feel like we're stuck in a really mundane musical. Little music makers is simply a music classes for children ages 0 – 4 years and their parents.
We sat in a circle around a man with a guitar, wearing colourful clothes, a silly little hat and shoulder length curly brown hair. Tobias is a caricature of a children's entertainer.
We beging by singin a welcome song, Tobias goes around welcoming all the kids and then all of the Mums. It's clear that having a man in the class is a novelty, Tobias adds "welcome dads" into the song but it doesn't fit with the rhyme. For about an hour we sing and dance, walk, stomp, clamp and rattle. The group is made up of about 10 kids. The youngest is Frida at 4 months and the oldest is 2 years. The older kids charge about screaming, the younger ones, including Leo are in ore. Leo seemed to really enjoy the noise and the other kids. At the end I speak with Tobias and sign us up for he next weeks.
I also met my first parental leave friend. Fridas mum Lisa sat next to Leo and I and we talked a little. German to begin with, switching to English when I struggled. We exchanged numbers and talked about meeting for a coffee "as it's nice when the kids are a similar age to hang out" and in a hushed tone "plus I'm a bit sick of all the mum talk so it would be nice to speak to a Dad". I'm not sure if we will meet but it would be nice and mostly it's reassuring that I'll meet people. Despite It being completely innocent it is still a little strange exchange numbers with a women you've just met. Something my friend Nina echoed, she told me she sometimes meet men at baby classes, but rarely did they meet up again. It just seemed awkward.
So let's see, I will need to get used to being one of the very few men in a very female world.