bubbles and pools and cake, ecstasy

It's great how happy you can make a toddler, how easily: 

A couple of bubbles and a friend, and they are ecstatic. Or maybe not?

I think maybe the streamer (note to self: streamers are not the same as ribbons. One is made of paper, and rips at the drop of a hat) broke off the balloon.

But not all was lost. We still had one of these: 

It was a hit. She's still talking about it, two weeks later. Oreos for wheels, little candies for head- and tail-lights, cookies with icing on them for windows, and white chocolate buttons with fair trade chocolate hazelnut stuff for people ... it was fun. One of our guests commented that chocolate sponge is rarely a material used in large vehicle construction, when I pointed out its structural weaknesses. 

Since then, well, we've changed the bedtime routine (again!). "Mummy say night night. Mummy say last book. Mummy sing a song. Mummy say night night". We have high hopes that eventually this will lead to a short, simple, conflict-free reliably-timed bedtime, reducing the number of long and somewhat awkward interactions with our fantastic teenage babysitters in which we ask them what they are doing lately and try to explain why we can't get our child to sleep reliably by 8:30. My explanations are ... weak.  As usual with these things, we're a few days in, and it appears to be working. So far. Jinx.

Is there anything else interesting? Nina can walk down the street listing things she likes: "I like buses, I like planes, I like puppies, I like bees, I like buses, I DO like SWINGS! I like slides" ... She can use "might", in the context of "we MIGHT see another bus, wait see". She still loves the pool. We went again, now that summer has disappeared. When I said that I hoped our nice weather would last, an English colleague told me that it HAS lasted, that if it ends now we'll have had a really great summer. Hmph. After a week of 20+ (C) weather several English people tell me that they just "can't abide this heat". Heat? 

But at the pool Nina jumps in, she paddles about in her little Konfidence jacket, she is absolutely overcome with joy when I announce that we are going there. She recognises it when we are about 2 blocks away, though we haven't been for months.

 

Negotiate, negotiate, negotiate, negotiate ....

 Am I getting any useful business skills out of this endless need to negotiate? Shoes on, shoes off, playing with this toy, or that toy, going to childminder, whether we go to the swings afterwards, whether the pajamas go on, teeth brushing, hair brushing, eating now or eating in 3 minutes, eating this or eating that, drinking from this cup or that cup ... the list goes on and on and on and on. Right now I'm at a friend's place babysitting their 2-year-old daughter. She whined just a little, as she realised her daddy was going out, but once she had the milk and I was midway through the Cat in the Hat, she dozed off, a full hour earlier than Nina's been going to bed. No doubt she doesn't wake up at 8, either, seeing as I know my friend drops her off at nursery at 8:30. But still! It's quiet here, and though they were rushed today, it's cleaner than our place. Big challenge. AND it doesn't look like a couple of geeks put randomly chosen decorations up with no thought to a colour scheme or any understanding of decor. It looks like adults live here. The living room is configured so that when you sit on the sofa you don't look in the direction of the toys. Wow. What would that be like?

But that's not the point. What I'm worried about is that Nina was fine until I stood up, at 6, and said I was going to make soup. She wanted one of her treats from the cupboard, not even a sweet treat really, just a baggie of organic fruit/veg puree (the Ella's kitchen ones, for those who know them) and when I wouldn't give it to her, she just LOST IT. COMPLETELY. So after some screaming, I said it was time for a time out, and put her on the time out tile, and sat with her because otherwise she won't stay there. And she screamed for a while, and I said it was over and got up. And then she REALLY lost it. I guess she wanted me to sit there with her - was it my attention she really wanted in the first place? We'd been playing, but I also had to look up which decongestants make you drowsy (that's another story: incredibly irritating rules, no doubt meant for safety, about how pills can't possibly be dispensed in bottles but have to be in little paper individually-wrapped thingies so you never have the actual packet to tell you what this thing actually does to you. Is it safer this way? stupid rules. And it makes you drowsy anyway so I didn't take it, sniffle, sniffle, is this allergies or the 1152nd cold ...? ). 

Back to Nina: was she just too hungry to think? Was it tiredness? I couldn't think, or cook, or do anything. I put her in her cot so I could start making the simplest food possible. Then she kept refusing to get out, but still crying, and this went on, until finally I picked her up, announced that the tantrum was over, put her down in front of some yogurt, and she began to recover. But she was still talking about wanting a time out, and wanting to go back in the bed. What was that? And I love her so much, and all, but ... coming over here to a quiet sleepy toddler who didn't have to negotiate which pajamas to wear and which story to read and whether it's a story or a song and which toys are in the bed and where's payeh and where's pengie (because the two penguins have their own names now) and every damn detail of every step from bath to bed, well ... it was a contrast. A peaceful, relaxing, quiet, clean, contrast, in which almost an hour has gone by, and back at MY house, the toddler probably hasn't even started trying to sleep yet. And there's an entire BOX of kleenex just sitting right here.

Two

Two! How'd that happen?

The other day we went to Caerphilly Castle, in Wales. It's great. It's a 13th century medieval castle, which wasn't actually used for very long (some 20 years at most, I gathered). We went there just under 2 years ago. It was driving, pouring with rain. It looked like this: 

It felt authentic, breastfeeding my screaming infant under the driving rain in a ruined stone tower. 

This year it looked like this: 

Note the sunshine, the lack of crying and the complete lack of infant. It's sad, the lack of infant, in a nostalgic kind of a way, but she's just so much fun these days.

We made cupcakes on her actual birthday and had a few people over from our group of mum/toddler friends. She's still talking about it: "I help Mummy, I make a cake, friend *thank you* Nina, like a cake, Cami have a cake, friend have a cake..." It made a big impression.

I'm going to make a bus-shaped cake on Saturday. I had planned a penguin, but it's clear that buses are the excitement of the month, and maybe of the year. Those and planes, but buses are an easier shape for cakes. If I'm doing extremely well perhaps I'll draw a penguin riding the bus.

Two years old is ... the utter passion with which we talk about swings, and how they're a "bit scary!"; the hugs and kisses and the "no MUMMY do it, MUMMY push stroller, MUMMY take to bed, MUMMY turn change a nappy!". It's the "no MY do it", the "I make a cappuccino, I make a papaccino, I make a mummyccino, ninaccino, that's NINA's!". It's talking about friends even when they're not around: "Cami sit in this chair!", talking about the cakes of weeks ago, waking up in the morning and saying "Mummy take a BEACH today!", being completely DEVASTATED by not being able to climb into the carseat herSELF ("No MY climb in self! MYself! ...  ... TAAAAAAANTRUM"). 

They talk about the terrible twos, and there are terrible moments I guess, but it's hilarious to hear your kid, deep in sleep, say "there's a BUS and a PLANE!".   And awake: "Bye bye broken castle, Nina's going!" and then three days later: "I did a broken castle. Bye bye, broken castle. MUMMY LOOK there's a BUS! a BUS! Round and round, round and round. Bye bus! Nina's going to the SWING!" This was yesterday, after a pleasant afternoon at the zoo with friends, where we saw the penguins being fed. "I see a pengie lunchtime. Pengie lunchtime!". And it's pretty fun to run along the sidewalk and hear your 2-year-old say "I'M running FAST to the PUB".

Happy birthday, baby Nina. If you ever read this, know that we love you beyond what we ever could have imagined. And for today, dream of buses, planes and cupcakes, and we'll take you to the beach again soon.