Uncle Dudditz!
One of the great pleasures of being
Jasper’s dad is the
reaction we get from our friends and family when they see him after a
long
absence.
Children change so quickly that there’s always growing and development to catch up on. The little man’s reaction to visitors is unpredictable and often hilarious.
Jasper’s middle name comes from my best friend, Douglas Gloag, who teaches English in Japan and visits no more than once a year.
For various reasons too complex to explain in a short weekly column, Douglas became ‘Dudditz!’ several years ago, long before we knew we’d have a son dedicated to him. Last weekend, I flew out to Vancouver to intercept Uncle Dudditz! on his way to Montreal: Douglas Junior and Douglas Senior met for the first time at the airport on Monday night.
Having missed out on Jasper’s first eleven months, Doug has come in just when things are starting to get interesting. As you can see from our attempts to get some kind of photo, JD no longer likes being held for any period of time – this interferes with his hectic crawling around, abusing inanimate objects time.
Uncle Dudditz! is a figure of some amusement for our offspring. Unlike daddy, Dudditz! has a permanent beard. His hair is completely different, reddish brown being worlds away from his mummy and daddy’s black.
Uncle Dudditz! cuts quite an imposing figure, and thanks to his many years in Japan, can sit cross-legged at baby height. Games being an obsession of myself and Doug since childhood, he’s ideally qualified to entertain the young pup.
Sadly, Uncle Dudditz! is only in town for about a week, and JD is not at his best right now, having caught a cold from his cousins, still cutting his top front teeth and testing the boundaries of our patience with his experiments in attention-seeking whining when he doesn’t get his way.
Life is changing. In the past, Doug and I would have spent the vast majority of our time together on the computer, bashing Orcs or building unstoppable armies to sweep across virtual worlds with, while consuming ridiculous quantities of food and booze.
We’ll still do that, of course, but Jasper’s presence will ensure that our precious few days together will be more interesting and varied – at least, between naps! Sleep well.
