Gacaca courts in Rwanda
Dear Diary. Last night, Girlfriend and I were woken up three times. The first time was at midnight when we heard a beeping, alarm-like noise from the living room. I went to investigate it and discovered that it was Girlfriend's Azatom radio. It seems 1-year-old was pressing buttons on the remote earlier and must have set an alarm.
The second time was at 1 pm when 1-year-old woke up and started crying. He had stood up and was holding on to the side of the cot. I went into his room to comfort him and put him back down. When I left though, he stood back up and started crying again, so I had to go in a second time. This time though he fell back asleep.
Then we were woken up again at 6 am, again by 1-year-old crying. Girlfriend told me to get 1-year-old and bring him into bed with us. Girlfriend lets 1-year-old come into our bed as long as it's after 5 am, you see.
Then I couldn't get back to sleep. At 7:15 am, Girlfriend's alarm went off and she got out of bed. She then got dressed in the bathroom. She gets dressed in the bathroom instead of the bedroom to try to avoid waking me and 1-year-old up. I was already awake though, but I pretended to be asleep for some reason.
I had an erection and it wouldn't go away so I masturbated while Girlfriend was in the bathroom. I didn't have a tissue handy so I had to cum into a sock.
Girlfriend left the house around 7:50 am and at 8 am I think I fell asleep again. Then at 8:45 am, 1-year-old finally woke up. When he wakes up in our bed, he sits up and cries. I opened the shutters to let the light in and then picked him up. I let him direct me to the living room, even though I should have taken him straight to his bedroom to change his nappy, as his nappy usually fills up with wee during the night. In the living room, 1-year-old and I looked at his books about animals and played with his animal figures (he's definitely into animals at the moment).
Then I smelled poo. So I told him I was going to change his nappy and I tried to pick him up, but he wanted to walk instead, by pushing the back of his Ikea Latt chair. When we got to the bedroom, I picked him up and put him on the changing mat, and as usual, he protested, cried and tried to squirm away. He doesn't like having his nappy changed for some reason. I managed to calm him down by showing him the animals on his new nappy - there was an elephant holding a balloon in its trunk, a giraffe and a rabbit. Then I took to the task of changing his nappy. As I unzipped his pyjamas, I saw there was poo all down his left leg. It had even reached as far down as his foot. The smell was like a barnyard. I picked up the big pieces of poo using wet wipes and put them into the bin. Then I wiped 1-year-old's leg and foot clean. All the while he was complaining and trying to get away. After that, I took off his pyjamas (which had poo on them, of course) and then finally his nappy. From that point, the task was easy, as I just had to wipe his bum clean, dry it and put on a clean nappy. Finally, I got him dressed.
After this, I got dressed while 1-year-old pushed his tiny, infant-sized Latt chair around in the corridor. Then I took him to the kitchen so I could get him something to eat before nursery. 1-year-old wanted to look in the fridge so I picked him up and showed him the inside of the fridge. He saw corn on the cob at the back of the fridge, wrapped up in its plastic packaging, and he reached out his arm and grabbed that. One of his favourite foods is corn on the cob, you see. I know that corn on the cob is an unusual breakfast but I decided to let him eat it, so I put him down on the floor and took it out of the packaging. Normally I'd heat it up in the microwave but 1-year-old wanted to eat it straight away, so I let him have it. After a few bites though he let go, so I used the opportunity to stick it in the microwave for a minute or so.
After that, 1-year-old wanted to look in the fridge again. This time he found a kiwi, another one of his favourite foods. He gave a little gasp of excitement when he found it. So again I put him down on the kitchen floor, but this time I was peeling and cutting up a kiwi instead of taking corn on the cob out of its wrapper.
While he was eating his kiwi, I pointed to the jar of oats we keep on a shelf above the microwave. 1-year-old gave a big gasp of excitement when he saw what I was pointing to. Another one of his favourite foods is porridge, you see. He gave an even bigger gasp when I took the jar down from the shelf - it was an actual gasp, as though he was having an asthma attack and struggling for breath, except he had a big smile.
So anyway, he ate porridge, yadda yadda yadda, we got to the nursery (quite late today - 10:20 am). I entertained the kids in the nursery by picking up leaves, tasting them and then pretending to puke. They all found this hilarious and I soon had all the kids in the yard surrounding me and watching. I had to end it though when they were crowding around so much that they were scaring 1-year-old, and even worse, they had started forcing leaves into my mouth.
When I got home, I finished an essay about whether the Gacaca courts in Rwanda were a successful transitional justice measure. I have to admit that I think I've done a good job with this one. I'll send it to the student tomorrow.
At 3 pm, Girlfriend finished work and picked up 1-year-old from the nursery. At 3:30 pm, she arrived home with 1-year-old in the pushchair.
Nothing much else to say except that at 4:20 pm, I took 1-year-old to a swimming class at the O2 Wellness Center. Girlfriend and I have been taking him to swimming classes there since September last year. Currently, we take turns taking him, with Girlfriend going on Tuesdays and me on Thursdays. Today was my turn to take 1-year-old. I don't mind going too much but it takes a surprising amount of effort. We have to prepare all the swimming stuff in a bag for one thing - the towels, 1-year-old's swimming nappy, my swim cap, my swimming shorts, a snack for 1-year-old to eat after the class, books to keep 1-year-old entertained on the journey there and back, a lock for the locker. There's probably more stuff that I'm forgetting.
Then there's the task of changing myself and 1-year-old in the changing room. That's difficult because the changing room is too hot and when I get hot, I get stressed. The changing room is unisex, by the way. That's one of the main reasons I take 1-year-old swimming - I hope that I'll get to see some tits or fanny. I only have once so far though, and that was a woman with her back to me, so it doesn't really count. The women are too quick to get dressed, dammit.
1-year-old is in the swimming class for babies but today the swimming teacher told me that she thinks 1-year-old is too old for this class and should join the next class up, the one for toddlers. I agree. Today 1-year-old didn't want to do most of the activities, instead preferring to climb in and out of the pool, with just a little help from me. After the class, all the parents took the babies to the spa pool, as usual. 1-year-old loves this pool as it has a jacuzzi and a waterfall in it. He was able to climb out of the pool today and press the buttons that activate the jacuzzi and waterfall.
After we got out, I held 1-year-old in a towel and we stood and watched the next swimming class.
In the changing room afterwards, there was this woman getting changed next to me. She's somewhat attractive. She has a ten-month-only baby of whose gender I'm unsure. I'm 80% certain it's a boy. Anyway, although this woman is attractive, she also talks a lot, which was welcome at first at it gave me someone to talk to, but it became annoying, especially because the changing room swelter was overheating me. I gave 1-year-old a bottle of water to drink from and he spilled it over his clothes, which meant I had to take off his jumper, long-sleeved t-shirt and body and put on a new body. Then I couldn't find 1-year-old's shoes. I found one on the floor and somehow the other one had found its way under the pushchair of another parent.
I didn't even get to see this woman's tits because she changed herself so quickly I didn't have time to. One moment she was in her swimsuit, the next moment she was in a red polka-dot dress. It makes me wonder if she just threw her dress on over the top of her wet swimsuit to avoid getting naked in front of me and the other man in the changing room.
I reached into the pram bag for a bottle of water and accidentally pulled out a bottle of bubbles instead. This woman, I'll call her Fairly Attractive Talkative Mom, got excited because her son/daughter hasn't seen bubbles before. I said I would blow some bubbles right there and then but I didn't think that a changing room was the appropriate place to do so. (She was speaking Spanish and I was speaking a crude level of Catalan.) She said that it would be fine because bubbles are just soap and water, so I said okay, and proceeded to blow bubbles in the changing room. Well, at least I tried to because I'm surprisingly bad at blowing bubbles. I managed to make a few small ones then I let Fairly Attractive Talkative Mom take over. She blew out long strings of big bubbles, one after the other. She was a bubble-blowing master.
Anyway, I'm not sure I'll see this woman again, as 1-year-old will be doing the swimming class for toddlers next week instead of the class for babies, and plus Girlfriend and I won't be taking 1-year-old for swimming classes after March as we don't go often enough to justify paying €50 a month for them.
After the swimming class, I took 1-year-old home. The only notable thing that happened on the way home is that 1-year-old fell out of the pushchair while we were in the lift in our apartment building. I hadn't strapped him into the pushchair and he was leaning too far out. Out he fell, and onto his bed. Now he had a bruise on his forehead. I feel bad about that as it was my fault as I hadn't strapped him in.
After that, 1-year-old had a bath, we had dinner, Girlfriend put 1-year-old down to sleep, I wrote this diary entry, then we went to bed.
Leave a comment