Just like my brother

Most of you out there reading this are my family and friends, and so most of you know my (younger) brother. Some of you even knew him when he was Nina's age. Well, there are some similarities, eerily so, as I don't think I've taught her any of these things. Can toddlers' daily likes and dislikes be genetic? As far as I understand it, when people find a human gene that is "linked with" something, it accounts for maybe a 2% change in risk of that thing, or accounts for 2% differences between groups, or something. My point is that it's complicated. There are confounding factors in people's environments, upbringings; there are other genes too, and other physiological factors, and genes (and other things) can interact. How can it be that my daughter doesn't like to paint with her fingers, but instead holds her hands up, and says "Haaaand. Dirty! Washa hand! I washa hand. Mummy wash a hand...?" It's the same when she gets bits of food on her hand, and she doesn't play in the dirt. Both my Dad and my brother really just don't like having sticky hands, and neither does my baby girl.  Amazing. 

And there are other things. For example, apparently when I was little, I was very sensitive to faces in books, and could tell if they were just a teeny bit sad. I still can't watch any film rated above about 15 for violence, and I'm even more sensitive to cruelty in film. Nina's favourite book right now is called "Woobie discovers music". My aunt got it for her at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. Little Woobie tries to clean his uncle's tuba, but he uses soap and water, and bubbles come out everywhere at the concert. My point is that on the next page, little Woobie is worried and crying. Nina says "woobie crying. woobie sad. Woobie CAR! Red car!". Woobie is pulling a red car on a little string. And she's a bit concerned about the crying but wow, look at that car. MY car. Woobie car. SHARE car. She also really likes buses, so much so that we took her to city centre on the bus last weekend and she is still talking about it. The wheels, you know, they go 'round and 'round. I was showing her pictures of buses on the internet and she loved them. We came to a school bus and she said "Goo bus! GOO BUS!" and she's never even seen one before but my brother just loved them and also called them goo buses. She loves gadgets, any kind of buttons to press, latches to figure out, little things to manipulate and to turn. She can figure out how to get my digital piano to do this amazing demo arpeggio thing that I have never heard before, despite having owned the thing for 12 years. And when she does it, it's an astonishing sound to hear a 1-year-old playing on a piano. 

Nina is, as babies go, pretty good about sleeping in. She's unfortunately got me trained now and I wake up at 7:30 with various work issues boiling around in my head, unable to get back to sleep. Often, like today, she's up shortly after 7 singing to herself. But often she's not, and doesn't wake up until 8 or so. I guess when she goes to school it'll be different, but I am very glad not to have to get up at 6:30 like my friends do. 

Well, congratulations to the brother in question, who is now ... married! Thanks for the pics, you both look really happy and we are looking forward to the party even if Nina will probably not be a flower girl after all :)  

Meanwhile the bedtime thing brings me to another topic: picking battles. As in, we pick some battles, and we let others lie. If you try to fight all the battles, you are always fighting with your toddler and telling them 'no, no no no no' all day long and in the end, how can they take it seriously? and they can never please you, which presumably would be frustrating for them, and wouldn't they stop trying eventually? and that'd be sad. So here are some battles we have picked:
- we brush her teeth. And wow, that IS a battle. But I don't want her "brushing" her own teeth. I don't want her to end up with teeth like mine.
- the carseat. Everyone's got this one. It has taken a while but the carseat is now referred to, by Nina herself, as the "no crying seat". Has she realized that there is no amount of noise she can make, no amount of frantic skyward pushing of the hips, no amount of redness in the face, of desperate tears streaming down her cheeks, that will convince us that it's ok to drive to the pool without her in the carseat? Could it be? 
- we do not carry her home from places, especially when we have the stroller with us. It undermines our childminder, who has other children to care for, and who just can't carry her; besides she is almost 13kg now. But that can be a real battle because sometimes we *do* carry her, for stretches, like across a busy street or if she isn't feeling well.
- shoes in the pub. We live in England and pubs are probably our favourite thing about that. But Nina needs to have shoes on to walk around in the pub, even if the shoes come  off for her to jump on the couches. More on pubs some other time. They are truly a happy part of our lives. 
 - bedtime: come whatever, barring SEVERE illness, that kid goes to bed AFTER 7:30. Like I said I do NOT want to start getting up at any time that starts with a 6. Ever. 


No doubt there are more battles that we have picked, things like not eating Organix cheese puffs for breakfast, not standing on the furniture, not throwing books (that's a big  one, it turns out), not throwing hard things at Mummy, etc etc etc. Those ones just jumped out at me. Here are some we haven't picked: 

- eating out of the yogurt container. This is now standard practice for those under 1m tall in our household.
- crayons. The big fat non-toxic ones just don't work. There is a reason that crayons aren't edible or whatever. The little ones may break into chokable pieces, but they draw. Nina never eats them anyway. Come to think of it there are loads of things she plays with that probably aren't technically safe for under-3's. Whatever. We all survived it, and she's not playing alone, and she really never puts things in her mouth anyway.
- "please" and "thank you". We may be updating this policy, but we don't insist on it to the degree that our childminder would like, or that my friends do, although Nina does say them and we encourage it, if gently.
- Routines. Enough said. We don't like them and we don't insist on a set dinner time, although of course there are patterns and we do the same thing before bedtime, etc, so we have some routine. But if we feel like going to the park at 7pm, we go.

Battles I wish I had picked: 
- eating some of what we make, not a variety of other stuff like olives, cheese, a cracker and 4 bites of apple. That would be really nice. 
- teeth (earlier) so she would let us brush them already, drat it. 

 ... no doubt there are more.


What about you? Are there battles you wish you'd picked or wish you hadn't?