Iggy and Me and the Baby Read online

  “…And off go we!” I joined in.

  I did it.

  Mum helped me, but I did it.

  And I did it again. I did it twenty times until I got to the end, and then I turned the needles round and started again.

  When Iggy came back from riding her bike, her hair was wild and windy and her cheeks were numb with cold. She put her head round the door of the sitting room where I was knitting. She looked at me like I was a magician now too.

  “Wow, Flo,” she whispered. “Just Wow.”

  Later, after supper, Dad was reading the newspaper and Mum was knitting and so was I. Iggy was doing a lot of sighing.

  “What’s the matter, Iggy?” said Dad.

  “I’m a tiny bit bored.”

  “Do you want a turn?” I said. “Maybe I could help you, now I know how.”

  Iggy shook her head and scrunched up her nose.

  “It’s not as hard as it looks,” I said.

  “Well, it looks extremely hard,” Iggy said. “And I don’t think I can do it.”

  “Just like riding a bike,” Dad said, “and swimming.”

  “And tying your shoelaces,” said Mum, “and plaiting Flo’s hair.”

  Iggy frowned at them. “What do you mean? I can do all of those things. I’m very good at them.”

  “Exactly,” Mum said. “But before you could do them, they looked hard, and you gave up straightaway.”

  Iggy folded her arms and sighed again. I patted the sofa next to me, for her to come and watch, and I knitted extra carefully and slowly. Iggy leaned in until her nose was very close to my hands. I knitted a few stitches.

  “See?” I said. “In the rabbit hole, round the tree,”

  “Yes,” said Iggy, squeezing herself in front of me, sort of on to my lap, as if we were both riding a bike and my knitting was the handlebars. “I see.”

  She held on to the needles with me and we did the next bit together.

  “Out the rabbit hole. And off go we!”

  In the next five months, or twenty weeks, or one hundred and forty days, we got quite good at knitting. We knitted the baby a whole, extra long, rainbow coloured scarf. We took it in turns, just Iggy and me. And when it was finished, we put it in the drawer with all the soft and fluffy porridge-coloured things that Mum had made.

  “Our scarf is definitely the brightest and loudest and happiest thing in there,” Iggy said. “It’s going to be the baby’s favourite.”

  And we waited for the baby to come and wear it.

  Auntie Kate and Uncle Chuck came to stay with us a few weeks before the baby was supposed to be born. We had to move around in our house to fit them in, like a game of musical beds.

  Mum and Dad said that Iggy would have to move into my room and sleep with me.

  “Auntie Kate and Uncle Chuck are never going to fit in my bed,” Iggy told them. “They are much too tall and full of baby. They will be very uncomfortable.”

  “They aren’t going to sleep in your room,” Mum said. “We are. Auntie Kate and Uncle Chuck are going to sleep in our bed.”

  “Well, how will you fit in my bed?” Iggy asked.

  “With great difficulty,” said Dad.

  “Maybe one of us should sleep on the sofa,” Mum said.

  “Ooh, I like it,” Iggy said, rubbing her hands together and standing on the tips of her toes. “It’s a pyjama party. It’s a sleepover. It’s awesome.”

  Dad said that just because we were having an American to stay, it did not give Iggy the right to speak like one.

  “Aw, shucks,” said Mum.

  “Gee, can’t we?” I said.

  “OK, you guys,” Dad said. “Enough already.”

  Dad’s American accent is very good.

  When they arrived, Uncle Chuck had to help Auntie Kate get out of the taxi because she was so big and round and pregnant. We all rushed out to meet them. Auntie Kate could hardly bend down for our kisses, because her baby got in the way. She waddled slowly in front of us up the path to the front door. She waddled like an Auntie-Kate-shaped penguin.

  Iggy put her hand over her mouth and giggled.

  “If you’re wondering if I’m as uncomfortable as I look,” Auntie Kate said, while she waddled, “the answer is yes.”

  Iggy stopped giggling. “Oh dear,” she said. “Poor Auntie Kate.”

  “Ouch,” said Dad.

  “You can say that again,” said Auntie Kate.

  Auntie Kate made herself comfortable on the sofa, using all the cushions, and Mum brought her a cup of tea. Iggy and me sat on the floor, just underneath Auntie Kate’s big round belly.

  “When your baby comes,” Iggy said, “will I be an auntie like you?”

  “You’ll be the baby’s cousins,” Dad told her.

  “Are cousins very important?” Iggy asked, sitting up straight like she does on the carpet at school.

  “Definitely,” said Auntie Kate. “Extremely important. Especially grown-up girl cousins, like you and Flo.”

  “Babysitters you mean,” said Dad, and Auntie Kate smiled.

  “Is it going to be a girl or a boy?” said Iggy. “Do you get to choose?”

  “No, we don’t get to choose and we don’t even know yet. It will be a surprise.”

  “What are you going to call the baby?” Iggy said. “Have you got any names?”

  “Clover?” said Dad and Iggy blushed.

  “Stella if it’s a girl,” Uncle Chuck said, “and Benjamin if it’s a boy.”

  “When is he or she going to come?” Iggy said. “And where? And How? Can we be there?

  “In a few weeks,” said Auntie Kate. “In a big pool of water. As quickly and painlessly as possible.”

  “And no, you can’t come,” said Dad. “Having a baby is not a spectator sport.”

  “Absolutely not,” said Mum.

  “But can we see Stella or Benjamin as soon as she or he is born?” Iggy said.

  “Sure you can,” said Uncle Chuck.

  “Who were the first people to meet us?” I said.

  “We were,” said Mum. “Me and Dad. And Flo was one of the first to meet you, Iggy.”

  I remember when Iggy was just born, even though I was only little. I remember she looked small and warm and pinkish, like a baked bean.

  Auntie Kate grunted and shifted a bit on the sofa.

  “I would very much like to have this baby soon,” she said. “I miss sitting on a chair like a normal person. I feel like a beached whale.”

  “What’s one of those?” Iggy said.

  Kate said, “It’s a whale who has come too far from the deep water where it swims and has got stuck on dry land and then realised how big and heavy and uncomfortable it is.”

  “How do you make a beached whale better?” I said.

  “You keep them wet and you wait for the tide to come in, and when the water is deep enough they can swim away,” said Uncle Chuck. “And sometimes you lift them with special machinery and put them back in the sea.”

  “Do you need lifting with special machinery?” Iggy asked Auntie Kate.

  “Nearly,” Auntie Kate said, and she tried to laugh, but her tummy got in the way.

  In the night, there was a bit of a commotion. I heard voices and footsteps, and I heard the front door open and shut.

  My heart was beating very fast, but I couldn’t get up to see what was going on, because Iggy was asleep with one arm and one leg stretched across me. I didn’t want to wake her up. Iggy snores very gently, like a small hippo.

  In the morning, Iggy woke me up very gently, by tickling my face with her hair. When I opened my eyes, she was right there, close up and big, and smiling.

  I was very tired.

  “Shall we go and see people?” she whispered, still very close up.

  “What people?”

  “Auntie Kate and Uncle Chuck people!” Iggy said, climbing out of bed.

  “In a minute,” I said, turning over. “I’m not ready yet.”

  “Well, can you plea
se be ready soon?” Iggy said, stretching up her arms until her belly button appeared from under her pyjama top.

  I reached out and tickled it.

  Iggy squeaked. “That feels funny,” she said.

  I told Iggy that Mum said belly buttons were the place where we used to be joined to her by a cord when we were inside her tummy, like Auntie Kate’s baby was inside hers. Iggy pulled up her top a bit and bent over to look at her belly button.

  “What, there?” she said, sticking her finger in it.

  “Yes, there. Mum said it’s where they cut the cord and tie it in a knot when you first get born. They put a clip on it and it drops off.”

  Iggy put her hands on her hips. “You are making that up,” she said.

  “I’m not.”

  “You are.”

  “I promise,” I told her.

  Iggy looked once more at her belly button and once more at me, and then she got up.

  “I’m asking Mum,” she said.

  Dad popped his head round the door.

  “Asking Mum what?”

  “About belly buttons,” Iggy told him.

  “She’s not here,” Dad said.

  “Where is she?”

  “She’s gone with Auntie Kate and Uncle Chuck to have a baby.”

  Iggy shut her lips as tight as they would go and her eyes got bigger and bigger. She looked like she might explode.

  I sat up in bed.

  “But the baby isn’t supposed to be born yet,” I said.

  “You and Auntie Kate and Uncle Chuck are about to find out that babies do whatever they want, never mind what’s supposed to happen,” said Dad.

  “When did they go to have the baby?” I said. “And why did Mum go?”

  “They went in the middle of the night,” said Dad. “And Mum drove them to the hospital.”

  I remembered the voices and the footsteps and the sound of the front door.

  “When will they be back?” I said.

  “When they are ready.”

  “What do we do?” I asked.

  “We wait for the phone to ring.”

  Iggy groaned.

  It was a very long day. I had no idea it took such a long time to have a baby.

  We had a cooked breakfast and got dressed and made our beds and tidied our rooms, but still no new baby.

  We waited and waited and waited.

  I wrote a Welcome to the World card, and Iggy wrote one too.

  I made a changing mat out of four pieces of paper stuck together, with ducks and hearts and flowers all round the edge, and Iggy made one too.

  Still no new baby.

  I drew a picture of Auntie Kate and Uncle Chuck and the new baby, and Iggy drew one too.

  I asked Iggy quite politely not to copy me, and she said she couldn’t help it because she was going mad with waiting and I had all the good ideas.

  We watched TV, we played cards and we helped Dad with the recycling.

  Still no new baby.

  I thought the phone would never ring.

  And then suddenly it did.

  “Hello?” Dad said, and he listened, and we held our breaths, and then he smiled.

  “What? What is it? What?” Iggy said, jumping up and down.

  “OK,” Dad said. “See you in half an hour.”

  He put the phone down. He beamed. “It’s a boy,” he said.

  “It’s a Benjamin!” squeaked Iggy.

  And then we were all jumping up and down and laughing and skipping about. We were just about as happy as we could be.

  “Get your coats, girls,” Dad said. “Let’s go and meet the new Benjamin.”

  We went to the hospital. We kissed Benjamin’s little pink nose and we counted his fingers and toes and we gave him his Welcome to the World cards.

  “Hello, Benjamin,” I said, putting my hand on his warm tummy and feeling him wriggle.

  “Hello, Benjamin,” said Iggy, nuzzling his soft little head.

  “Hello, Benjamin,” we all said, while he slept, small and warm and pinkish, just like a baked bean, in Auntie Kate’s arms.

  “So, Iggy.” Mum ruffled her hair. “You got what you wished for after all. This family has a brand new baby.”

  “Somebody smaller than you,” Dad said.

  “And he doesn’t look at all noisy or hungry or smelly or exhausting,” Iggy said.

  “Just you wait,” Dad told her. “Benjamin hasn’t even got started yet.”

  I watched Iggy. She didn’t say anything for a minute. She was unusually quiet. Iggy only goes quiet when she is up to no good or she is unspeakably happy. She covered her eyes with her hands. All we could see was her great big smile.

  About the author

  Jenny Valentine moved house every two years when she was growing up. She worked in a wholefood shop in Primrose Hill for fifteen years where she met many extraordinary people and sold more organic loaves than there are words in her first novel, Finding Violet Park, which won the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize. The Iggy and Me books are her first titles for younger readers.

  About the illustrator

  Joe Berger grew up in Bristol, where he did an Art Foundation Course before moving to London in 1991. He works as a freelance illustrator and animator, and also co-writes and illustrates a weekly comic strip in the Guardian. His first picture book, Bridget Fidget, was nominated for the Booktrust Early Years Award.

  Copyright

  First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins

  Children’s Books in 2012

  HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of

  HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

  77-85 Fulham Palace Road, Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  1

  Text copyright © Jenny Valentine 2012

  Illustrations © Joe Berger 2012

  Jenny Valentine and Joe Berger assert the moral right to be identified as the author and the illustrator of this work.

  ISBN: 978-0-00-746354-1

  EPub Edition © JUNE 2012 ISBN: 9780007463558

  EPub Version 1

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