Baby Chloe

Hi! I’m Chloe. I would like to tell you of the time I first met Bluey as a baby. It all started one day in my bright blue seaside-themed nursery. My mum came in just as I was waking up. “Good morning, Chloe.” she said. I couldn’t speak yet, so I just waved my fists in happiness. My mum then sniffed the air. A stinky smell drafted straight into her nostrils. “Poo! Someone’s stinky. Time for a nappy change,” she said. She picked me up and took me out of my cot, and placed me on the changing me. She took off my dirty blue environmental nappy, powdered and wiped me and then placed a clean blue nappy with white spots on it. I looked a little embarrassing as a baby without a nappy on, but I have grown up a lot.

Next, we had breakfast. We had it downstairs in the kitchen. It took my dad a long time to wake up, as he was still in bed. Mum was pretending to be an aeroplane, making my blue plastic spoon fly into my mouth. Some of my food dribbled down my chin, but I still enjoyed this mashed up fruity treat. At last, my dad came in with his morning paper under his arm, feeling very tired. “Morning, love,” said my dad. “Still up all night cradling Chloe to sleep?” asked my mum. “Should I ever,” said my dad, “I didn’t get a wink of sleep last night.” “Well, someone has to look after Chloe when she cries in the middle of the night. Why not splash some cold water on your face? That always makes me feel better when I’ve had a rough night.” “Oh! Yeah, right,” said my dad, and instantly he ran up to the kitchen sink, ran the cold tap and splashed some freezing cold water on his face, like his nose was on fire. I saw this and clapped delightedly, laughing and squealing. “Look - Chloe loves that.” I smiled. “We should film this and put it on Youtube.” “Must…extinguish…face fire…” puffed Chloe’s dad in exhaustion.

For the next hour, my mum let me watch the fish in our fish tank. All the fish looked so big and the water was so wavy and splashy. She had to hold me up because I was too small to stand up just yet. I reached out to touch the glass, and it felt like I could go right through the tank and stroke the fish, like the tank had watery walls and the fish would fly out and swim slowly around the house. “Look at all the fishies!” said my mum. She made bubbling noises like a fish, and turned her paw into a fish, making it swim along beside me and nibbling gently on my side. I once saw a programme all about classical music, and one of the kids who was going on the adventure made an excellent fish impression. I also remember they were chased by a squid. The squid looked really scary, and I was crying, so mum had to put on another programme about a blue bear and a yellow rabbit.

Later, we went to the park. I enjoyed watching people playing in the playground with their kids, ducks splashing in the pond and kites floating in the breeze. Mum would point them out and pretend the kites were beautifully coloured birds coming from the rainforest. “There’s a parrot, Chloe. It goes, “Polly wanna cracker?”” I tried to flap my arms like a parrot. Suddenly, I saw some people I never met before. There were two families - one had two dogs that were blue, and another was orange. The other was an entirely human family - well, almost, four of them were human. No, five! I heard the fifth one, a teenage boy, was a werewolf, but as I got older, I found out he could turn into a werewolf whenever he got angry. There were three vampires, a half-dog, a leech, and two Egyptian mummies. They were waving hello to us as we came and sat down on the bench. Mum placed me on the picnic rug beside the blue puppy and the strange little human baby. I stared at them in confusion. Were they friendly?

“This is Chloe,” said my mum, “Isn’t she sweet? It took her Dad ages  to get up. Been helping soothe Chloe to sleep again.” “We can totally relate to you, Layla,” said the young girl’s mum, “Sybil’s been crying all night too, but luckily Luke here is an expert at soothing her to sleep. She’s even been soothed when he changed her nappy.” Luke? Was that the boy’s real name? And why is the girl named Sybil? “I totally love her. I love her as much as a game of Zombie Kickboxer.” said Luke. “We never play it in front of Sybil, because we might bash her face.” said the young vampire. “Resus!” hissed his mother, “Be nice. We have company.” Resus? His name was Resus? After some blood thingy? “Children these days. It’s so nice to see how they grow up across the years. In their first years you see them playing with stacking rings and spitting out milk and clapping along to nursery rhymes, but as they get older, screens is all they get attached to.” said the orange dog, who was named Chilli.

She then pointed to the blue puppy. “Bluey, this is Chloe.”  she introduced. This orange haired woman, called Sue, knelt down to Sybil. “This is Chloe, Sybil. Say hello.” Sybil reached out a hand to wave, but she fell flat on her stomach. We all laughed and laughed and laughed. “Such a nipper!” laughed the large blue dog, named Bandit, “Despite all my clumsy mistakes, there’s more to her than making me kneel on an animal sound book.” “I’ll play with the babies!” said Luke, “I’m an expert with little kids.” “Why don’t you play with Chloe and Sybil?” asked mum. “Always,” said Luke. “But what about us?” asked Resus. “We want to play with the babies too!” said the mummy, whose name was Cleo. “Now, kids, let Luke play with the babies. You two play with Bluey.” “Bluey is as Bluey does.” said Resus sarcastically. “I’ll help!” said Bandit.

Luke took me and Sybil to the pond. There were lots of ducks floating about, and fish swimming in the water. Luke took off his shoes and socks, and dipped his feet into the water. Luke’s socks gave a dreadful pong, but I placed one of his socks on my ears, pretending a sock puppet had attached itself onto my ear. “Uh oh, looks like the stinky sock parasite has emerged from your body,” laughed Luke, and took the sock off my ear. He put it on his hand and pretended it was a snake, hissing that he didn’t want a bath and wanted to bite someone on the bum. It then decided that it wanted to tickle, so he tickled me first, then he tickled Sybil, who laughed the loudest. He held us over the water up to our ankles and sang ‘1, 2, 3, 4, 5’ as we waited for fish to come and tickle our toes. When they did, we wiggled our toes furiously, laughing. Luke turned his hand into a fish, and made it swim along beside us. He introduced us to the ducks, and made quacking noises. He ran into the distance and began pretending to be a duck, waddling like a chicken and pretending to nibble bread.

Suddenly, Resus and Cleo ran in, Resus holding Bluey in his arms. “Is it our turn now?” asked Cleo. “Yeah, we’ve had our time with Bluey, when is it our turn?” Luke concerned a moment. He looked at me. He looked at Sybil. He looked at Resus. He looked at Bluey. He looked at Cleo. Then he sighed, and said, “Fine. We’ll share the babies.” Now, Luke had Sybil, Cleo had me and Resus had Bluey. We held piggyback races, we played on the swings, we played a cheeky game of hide and seek and peek-a-boo and took off all our shoes and socks and dipped them in the pond all together. It was so much fun, that I never even wanted to leave.

At sundown, it was time for us to go home. As Mum took me back to the car, I waved goodbye to my new friends, a frown plastered on my face like a builder put pink plaster on it. On the way home, my mum said to me from the front of the car, “Don’t worry, Chloe, we’ll see your new friends tomorrow. They’ll meet up there.” When we got home, we watched a documentary about whales on the TV. Those whales were so beautiful, I could watch them all day. I turned to the fish tank, with our fish swimming about. Then I turned to the window, with the sun setting in the cocktail orange sky, and some cockatoos flying back to their nests. I closed my eyes and pictured me and my mum swimming under the sea with our whale family. I wasn’t wearing a nappy at all, so I was free to be at one with the sea. It was just like those motivational images of mothers and babies swimming together in the sea.

Then I opened my eyes and it was bathtime. I was sitting, surrounded by lots of frothy bubbles and my squeaky whale toy, as my mum washed me with my baby bath gel. She popped bubbles and made them fly in the air, taking handfuls of bubbles and blowing them. I popped them and tried clapping my hands to reach them. I kicked my little legs in the water and laughed and squealed. I once splashed mum and she laughed too, splashing me a little bit. When I got dried, she wrapped a red towel around me so that I felt like a little underage superhero. Once, my dad came in and said, “Hey hey hey, it’s a superbaby!” and picked me up, making me fly around the room. The amount of warm air made my fur fluff up, so my mum had to use a hairdryer and brush to straighten it again.

Later on, she tucked me into my cot and kissed me goodnight. She whispered into my long ear: “I promise we could see Bluey again. Maybe Sybil. But no matter who we meet, the most important person in your life is me.” She went out of the room, took one last look at me, and turned off the light. I fell fast asleep, and began to dream my first dreams. My ones of playing with Bluey and Sybil and Luke and all his siblings, who I know will be my friends forever.