Writing -- Baby Talk: Oh the excitement!

The following article featured in a weekly column on parenting in the Women on Wednesday supplement of The Evening Echo, one of Ireland's leading regional daily newspapers. It appeared in the 02 June 2004 issue.

We got a new fridge the other day. Not a particularly earth-shattering event, you may think, but then you're not three years old. To the twins the arrival of a new fridge was high adventure, and required serious investigation….

"Dad, is that a new fridge?"

Yes!

"But, Daddy, is that our new fridge."

Right again.

"Oh… okay. And is that our old fridge?"

Absolutely.

"Daddy, our fridge is a little bit old... that's why we have to have a new one now."

What excitement! I'll spare you the drama that transpired when they discovered that the fridge and the freezer compartments had changed places on the new model - and the "fun" we had transferring the food from the old to the new. Suffice it to say that for the next hour or so I faced a barrage of nonsensical fridge-related questions and plenty of unconstructive "help".

Children find the oddest things stimulating. I guess it's a variant of that age-old truth: give a child an expensive toy and they'll have hours of fun playing with the box! It never ceases to amaze me how excited the girls get over relatively mundane things, like a walk down the street or a trip to the supermarket. And they're not alone… their little sister is enthralled by the world and everything in it.

A trip in the buggy down the lane across the road is interspersed with frequent gurgles of delight. She is captivated by the mottled green of the hedgerows, thrilled by the breeze wafting against her cheeks, fascinated by the birds singing and elated at the sight of her sisters charging ahead of her.

It's refreshing to see them all squeezing so much out of life. If only adults could do the same. But somewhere along the line we begin to take the little things for granted, and before long what used to fill us with wonder becomes just a humdrum piece of everyday existence.

When was the last time you just stood and opened your senses to the world around you? Experiencing the world on such a simple level can be a lot more difficult than it sounds: the prejudices and psychological clutter that punctuate modern-day existence tend to get in the way. Children tend to be much more open to the world around them. Combine that with the vivid imagination that most children posses and it's little wonder they seem capable of turning everything into a game, and of having fun practically anywhere. Which brings me back to the fridge.

To me the whole thing was a hassle: carting the new fridge in, transferring everything from one to the other, taking the old fridge out. It was just another chore on the seemingly interminable to-do list. The girls, in contrast, were having a ball.

How much easier would life be if we could turn all of the things we had to do into fun activities? I'm convinced that adopting a more child-like approach to life could be the elusive answer to a more productive, less stressful existence.

But no matter how much I try what comes so effortlessly to the children always seems just beyond my reach. No matter what I try all of those boring and mundane tasks are just as boring and mundane. Washing the car is still no fun, mowing the lawn remains tedious, work is still taxing, and, believe it or not, the new fridge is still just a new fridge, no matter which way I look at it!