It’s like this cult of parenting, this club of happy enthusiastic people who’ve been so nice and welcoming to Naomi and I ever since they’ve known Naomi was expecting.
There have been random acts of kindness and completely unsolicited advice from complete strangers – “this baby nail scissors is really good, you should get it”; well-wishes, congratulations and light-hearted warnings about the lack of sleep that we’ll be experiencing in the coming months.
Yesterday was even funnier. Not least because Naomi and I decided we needed to get our hair cut because we thought it would be months before we’d have time for another trim, and brought her mum along for the ride.
So it was family day at Next Salon at Holland Village, where I’ve been getting my hair cut several times a year for the last 9 years now.
You’d never imagine the establishment to be so, given its Wallpaperesque decor and 99.5FMesque music, but before the first strand of hair was shampooed or cut, the parenting tips came good and fast from our stylists Cheryl and Jerry, new parents themselves.
Diapers, feeds, clothes; Nursery, crying, sleep; You could fill an entire afternoon talking. And as Cheryl quipped, “remember the days when all you wanted to do was go one corner and smoke when your friends started talking about kids?”
And when the other senior stylist Jonathan (not a parent) came by to say hi and ask where exactly the car mechanic’s workshop I recommended previously was, I drew a blank for a good minute before my brain switched modes.
We talk babies these days, Jonathan. Not cars, not anything else. But you can join the club.
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