October 29, 2012
Ollie and Oliver at Oliver's fifth birthday party. My Oliver is on the right.
What can you say about a four year old that he won't tell you himself? A steady increase in his vocabulary allows him to not only express himself but to convince you that he in fact is right in his assessment! If the adage that you learn a lot about yourself through your kids is true then I have a learned a lifetime of lessons in the last year. We are now dealing with a little boy who is bright, a loving and attentive older brother, a headstrong adversary (I have no idea where he gets that from), a determined learner and the perfect son.
He does things on his own terms, he'll learn to play soccer at his pace, he'll drop the stabiliser wheels on his bicycle because he wants to and he'll set out to be the best swimmer in his class. In the past he wanted to be the best by osmosis, now he understands the concept of practice and application and uses it at will.
If one thing stands out it's his fantastic memory and attention to detail. He understands the logic behind the way things work. A certain incident is not far from my mind. We were on our way to school and a taxi behaved as only taxis do. A stream of expletives left my mouth which visibly distracted the taxi driver from his task of attempting to cause an 18 car pile-up. Oliver questioned me as to whether I knew that taxi driver, when I responded in the negative he asked me if I would like to be spoken to like that. Food for thought but not enough to satiate my eternal disdain of taxi drivers.
He's now five and approaching a whole new series of challenges at school which he is determined to face head on. He's a beautiful boy, a wonderful son, a stunning older brother and our getting bigger little boy. Happy birthday Oliver and thank you for the last five years.
By now we all know that Oliver was born on Peter Green's birthday - Chris Daffy played a special dedication to Oliver on his Sunday morning show on LM Radio. He had me beaming from ear to ear and Oliver was mesmerised by Chris' dedication (is he on the radio for real life?). Chris played Oh Well but that's too obvious for me.
I have long sung this song to babies to get them to sleep, Oliver has heard it a thousand times and James is knocking on that number. I prefer the Boston live versions. I could only find this one
06 - Various Artists - Fleetwood Mac - Jumping at the Shadows
And not forgetting an Ollie Halsall song. Ollie had a wicked sense of humour and it is no more apparent than on this song, that's Ollie on vocals too.
And because this is the last year that Oliver will be able to count his age on one hand here is the original version of Jumping at Shadows. Duster Bennett is worthy of checking out. What you are hearing is a live take and he's playing all the instruments at the same time - some people call this a multi-instrumentalist, I call it impossible. Fantastic! (just like Oliver)
Comments
Post a Comment