29 Monday Jul 2013
Posted in Speech
“It’s a MOUNTAIN Mummy! Look!” squealed my three year old with excitement, pointing. “Look! Mountain mountain mountain!”
I squinted in the general direction she was pointing, desperately trying to seek out the mountain she was so eager to show me.
Nothing.
“There’s no mountain poppet, just a lot of trees and some water,” breaking the news gently. Panicking now, she started jumping up and down. “No Mummy! Look! A MOUNTAIN!” Continue reading »
24 Friday May 2013
Posted in Motherhood, Speech
Photo credit: CP Photography
Next month, my tiny baby will turn three years old. She is no longer a jumble of miniature fingernails and nappies. Where her head was once only covered in a soft down, rubbed bald where she slept, she now has loose curls and a fringe.
Those bendy little limbs are now long and strong. Any hint of soft pudge has disappeared, leaving a gangle of arms and legs that almost fill the bath when she lies down.
My baby is no longer a baby.
This week I had one of those moments. You know the one: it hits you like a jolt and you see your child as they are for the first time. Continue reading »
09 Tuesday Apr 2013
Tags
Photo credit: CP Photography
We went to a wedding at the weekend. It was very lovely and moving and special. It has also taken me three whole days to get over, in order to sum up the courage to write about it.
The words “wedding ceremony” and “toddlers” should rarely be used in the same sentence. This is something I came to learn after the weekend anyway. Unfortunately, prior to accepting the invitation to attend a beautiful religious ceremony for a lovely couple, I was blissfully unaware that toddlers don’t do wedding ceremonies. Not my toddler, anyway.
It started the morning of the wedding. Fluffing up my two year old’s favourite floral party number, I asked if she was excited. I should have noted the warning signs there and then. Continue reading »
16 Wednesday Jan 2013
Posted in Behaviour, Motherhood, Speech
My daughter has always had attitude. At seven hours old, she let the world know she’d arrived by waking all the other sleeping babies on the hospital ward with loud shouts. The nurses joked she’d be an opera singer. I winced.
Her spirit was apparant when she refused to take a bottle of expressed milk. Ever. Medicine on a spoon? No way. In fact, if she didn’t want to do it or she wasn’t 100% in control of it, she was not a fan. Not a fan at all.
I’ve since learned that the best way to persuade my two and a half year old to do something not involving chocolate or paint is to make her think it was her idea. This helps in certain situations, but not in ones involving a new personality trait she’s been displaying recently. Continue reading »
07 Friday Dec 2012
Posted in Speech
It was 6.30pm and I was eager to get my beautiful, tired toddler into bed. With an evening of writing work stretching ahead of me, I knew I had a small window of opportunity before we found ourselves on a one-way journey to Tantrumville.
“I want book Mummy,” said Frog. Of course she did, it was bedtime. It’s to be expected.
“I want story Mummy,” said my daughter. Again, this is no big revelation. I wasn’t about to read her The Oxford English Dictionary. Continue reading »
15 Thursday Nov 2012
Tags
Christmas, development, Father Christmas, fears, Parenting, phobias, scared, toddlers
“NO!” She shouts as she pulls the hat down over her eyes. “I SCARED!”
My toddler is startled by a loud duck on the lake. She runs towards me, arms outstretched, as she begs to be carried away from the source of her fear.
Two days later, a visit to a nursery sees a lady drag out a hoover. “NO!” My daughter whimpers. “I SCARED OF THE HOOVER!” And she pulls at my arms, attempting to wrap her legs around me as I walk.
Later that night, as CBeebies is turned on for the regular pre-teatime juggle of cooking, stroppy toddler distraction and washing / cleaning / wiping multi-tasking…. “NO!” My two year old screams from the living room. “I SCARED OF MR WHOOPS!” She cowers under a blanket, occasionally peeping out as Grandpa In My Pocket blares from the television. Continue reading »
08 Thursday Nov 2012
Posted in Speech
“Then cow said MOO! And monkey hit cow. The end.”
I listened to my daughter reading her waterproof books in the bath this evening. She was terribly grumpy and the story she made up reflected that. Each character in her fictional world came to a sticky end. It made me smile.
Every day my daughter – who’ll be two and a half at Christmas (how did that happen?!) – reveals a little more of her vocabulary. As she strings sentences together I get to know her in a new way. This child of mine, who I thought I couldn’t love any more, just squeezes my heart that bit tighter with every new revelation.
I love her interpretations of things at the moment. I can almost see the cogs in her brain whirring as she tries to fathom basic concepts and ideas.
“Where Daddy?” She asks when we return home from the childminder’s. “Working,” She answers for me. “Daddy working. Daddy teaching in school.” This is her answer for whenever he is out of the house, even if he’s at the end of the garden. It’s like she can’t quite get her head round the fact he may leave the comfort of our living room and her side for anything other than this mysterious “school” she’s heard so much about. Continue reading »
05 Friday Oct 2012
Posted in Speech
New toddler headwear. Apparently.
A conversation between my daughter and I the other evening…. Continue reading »
25 Tuesday Sep 2012
Posted in Motherhood, Speech
Tags
body awareness, language, Parenting, public embarrassment, speech development, toddler development
My daughter is going through a “phase”.
It is a rather confusing phase, involving constant questions about certain body parts. Or a certain body PART, I should say.
While we’ve been down the “what do girls have” and “what do boys have” road before, this time it’s different. This time it’s Every. Single. Hour. Continue reading »
04 Tuesday Sep 2012
Posted in Motherhood, Speech
Tags
child development, language development, Parenting, personalities, toddler language skills, toddlers
Do you ever get those moments when you look at your child and think, “I’m only just getting to know you”?
I have them. Every. Single. Day.
Especially at the moment. I look back at those snuggly, sleep-deprived newborn days and remember how I used to hold my milky baby close to me, drinking in the smell of her head as she snored on my chest. During those weeks I thought I could never love anyone or anything as much as I loved that tiny creature.
But I was wrong. Continue reading »