baby talk

“Why don’t you have a baby? Don’t you want one?”

She’s weighing me up. Her eyes blinking up at mine with genuine concern.

The question has come out of the blue. It’s Saturday afternoon and we’re watching back-to-back Cbeebies cartoons whilst chomping on a couple of chocolate pudding cups.

“Urm, I don’t know, Ery. Maybe I’ll have one, one day...”

My friend’s five-year old daughter continues to gaze at me thoughtfully as if wondering whether to take the topic further. It’s clear she’s not entirely satisfied with my answer. And, like a miniature John Humphrys, she’s not going to let it drop.

“If you had one, you could bring it over to my house" her voice drops coyly, " I could tell you how to have one…?"

Now I’m intrigued, if slightly horrified about what she might say next.

“Really, Ery?” Where is her mother when you need her, I wonder.

“Yes, its easy really” she confides, “All you need to do is to wish really, really hard. And then your belly gets big. And then, you have one”

I smile. “But you’ve got to wish really hard” she emphasises her point by leaning her elbows onto my knees and scrutinising my face up close. She's being very serious and its apparent that I'm not. The whole effect is nothing less than comic.

I take it as a cue to respond in kind.

“Okay, Ery, I promise to remember that. You know, to give it a go, sometime” but it proves really, really hard to keep that straight face.