Magic Baby

Steve and I have always called Casper our Magic Baby.

The first time we properly left the house with Casper after he was born was when he was barely two weeks old. We were at a friend's (sharehouse) warehouse for dinner and I put Casper down in a cushion-filled boat that was being used as a couch in the middle of the living space. For some reason the resident cat was so offended by his crying that she attacked and scratched his face. Luckily I was there and so was a friend who angrily put her out in the rain. I was pretty shaken, but it didn't really sink in for me until much later and even now I shudder at the thought of it. I am glad she didn't do much more harm than the scar on his cheek.

When Casper was two months old, we were at the family farm walking in a paddock and a swarm of bees chasing a bird flew overhead. The bird duck-dived very close to where I was standing, holding baby Casper and I ended up with several bees in my hair and on my cardigan. Casper had some on his face which I tried to shoo away. One bee stung him right near the corner of his eye. He cried for about three hours and it was very scary but he came out pretty unscathed, no swelling or anything.

On New Years Eve when he was three months old we were driving to a friend's beach house and on the highway I noticed the tip of Casper's finger was swollen. It looked purple and shiny and very painful and he started crying. We went to the ER at Geelong hospital and stood in the waiting room next to a bogan with third-degree sunburn and several other weird NYE casualties. We were told it was a hair torniquet and it took the nurses and doctors about 45 minutes to cut the hair off.

I have found tiny spiders crawling around inside Casper's nappies on several occasions and other weird things have happened like genuine night terrors at a very early age and that time we woke up with hundreds of wasps in our bedroom and came back after a few hours to find them all dead. 

Nothing strange had happened for ages and I was starting to wonder if Casper's magic had worn off. The other day at Casper's request, I pulled down the two dollhouses that were up high on his chest of drawers. He was playing very happily with them in the sewing room and I went to clean in another part of the house. Suddenly I heard a huge crash and screaming coming from Casper's bedroom. He had climbed the chest of drawers and the whole thing had fallen and pinned him to the floor. Images of broken limbs and concussions were running through my mind and as I pulled the heavy weight off him I wondered if I should even  try to move him. The weirdest thing is, he came out of it with a scratch on his pinky toe and that's it. He stopped crying almost immediately and was playing outside 15 minutes later. 

Casper has always been a massive sleep-talker, sleep crawler, night terror sort of a kid. But last night at about 1am I heard his door open and slam really hard. I was really spooked so I went to investigate. Casper was sitting on the carpet outside his door with his eyes half open and his head down and when I picked him up he slumped over my shoulder and said "water". I was laughing when I asked Steve to get me a glass of water and kept laughing as I watched Casper still sleeping, sit up and take the glass in his hands, drink it and then fall on the pillow fast asleep.

He has my crooked pinkies which I inherited from my Dad, who is a magician (truly, I'm not lying). I'm not saying he is magic, but when I was pregnant with him, I found a six-leafed clover.