Good boy!

First off, apologies to anyone who might be reading this for not posting for so long. Parents here, stuff going on, excuses, excuses. The parents are gone now, a good time was had by all, despite sneezing. 

There's so much that's already lost, replaced by all the new and exciting things that Nina, and all kids, do every day, every week. Just for the record I thought I'd try to remember some of them before they are so lost in the mists of time that they disappear from my memory forever, though I know that some post somewhere won't ever bring them back, and I know that I want Nina to grow up, and not to stay a baby or a toddler. 

In my opinion, A. has some issues with prioritising. For example: if we are 27 minutes late for something, and Nina has just done a poo, he may decide that it's a good time to wash the shower curtain. Admittedly, I would probably never ever prioritise washing a shower curtain, or updating my ubuntu, or tidying the mail table, over just about anything else I felt was urgent. But still - really? The shower curtain? Right NOW? Another example: before Nina was as reasonable, as articulate, as charming, as she is these days at bedtime, there was a moment each evening when MILK was needed RIGHT NOW or there would be SCREAMING. Screaming, like the kind the neighbours still talk about 10 years later. So I started to use the phrase "priority item", as in, A, can you make the milk as a priority item? This means: please don't finish unloading the dishwasher, wash the shower curtain, and have some indian snacks first; MILK is a PRIORITY. 

This phrase was repeated sufficiently that Nina took it up, but pronounced it: "paya aiya mama! Papa, paya aiya mama!" Now it's changed a little; it's: paya itah mum.  Also poignantly, "gainl!" has been replaced with "again!" and "payay", then "pengie" is finally "penguin" unless referring in particular to payah or pengie; they now have names distinct from their species, you see. It's touching that they are still the favourites, along with a new doll, named Dolly.

Kids don't know which things we say are facetious, or which are specifically in the context of talking to a toddler, or which things are just going to sound a little odd to some other adult. Every morning I get up first, play with Nina for a while, and then we both go in to get A. up. I usually pester him to drag his sleepy self out of bed at about 8:15 and succeed by 8:25, give or take 5-10 minutes. Anyway Nina knows that I want him to get up. Yesterday he finally sat up, at which Nina clapped, and said loudly "Good GIRL papa! Good GIRL!". We explained that Papa is really more of a boy; a man, to be technical about it. We didn't bother trying to explain that when she does something I really want her to do, a perfectly reasonable response is for me to clap and say "good GIRL Nina", but ... when we do something she wants, like say follow her into the bedroom, maybe not so much. So tonight when A. brought in the freshly prioritised milk: "good BOY Papa!" 

There's more, much more .. for another time; remind me to post about the little cartoon I drew...

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.

Meltdowns!

It's funny, the meltdowns. I mean, they are funny later, after the molten-down kid is asleep, like right now. Today we had a nice evening after work, played in the garden for a while, came inside to make the couscous salad and generally life was cheerful. But then Nina was too warm, and wanted to take off her sweater. The sweater was underneath the PINK DRESS:

Don't ask me. She looked like that when I picked her up. Apparently she wore it all day. I don't know how it started. Let's just be clear: this is not MY example she's following, with the frilly-ness... and not A's either, just in case you were wondering.

Anyway, the dress had to come off, and OH MY GOD. The DRAMA! Time out. And the time out wasn't such a problem, even -- we still don't know what the problem was, except that it was about closing something. Nina kept shouting "Close it! close it!" and we'd look at the door and say "do you want me to close it?" and she'd say "...yeah" so we'd try to close the door and she'd scream "CLOSE IT! CLOSE IT", clearly not wanting us to close the door. This went on for about 10 minutes (10 minutes TOO LONG, 10 minutes with a tearful child literally lying on the floor kicking), until finally we brought her into the other room, and  I opened and closed my hands, and a pen with its lid, and we finally got through to her that we didn't understand what she wanted. Then suddenly it was all "Nina down the slide! Play Mummy gotcha!" and everything was fine again.

In other news: did Nina make her first language joke today? We were walking back from the car, happily parked nearby for once, and she said "mummy change nappy" so I said yes, we'll change it when we get home, and have you done a poo? and we talked about that for a bit (I'll spare you the details) and Nina said "Nappoo! Nina have a poo. Nappooo!" Get it? Nappee, nappoo ...  

Another thing she did, perhaps a more pleasing example, is to generalize "yesterday" to "tomorrowday". I thought that was very clever, though I admit I'm rather biased. She's also pretty good with "soon, not yet" referring to bedtime. It's been a month or two now that she's been talking about other days, which can be quite confusing especially if we don't know what event she's talking about. Yesterday we went on these little mini-trains, with real mini steam engines and mini tracks. They are so cute. And she loved it! She talked about them a lot today, but if I didn't know, I'd really wonder what "Nina went on train inna tunnel, train DARK, train too HOT" or "Nina did a train, little train wheel around and round, engine, fire engine, very hot" could mean.

Why a parenting blog?

I read this article yesterday on Salon by John Barry: My baby is too boring to blog about

And I disagree, but it made me feel defensive anyway. After reading other blogs, like Refract, I confess that I've wondered: given that I'm blogging, why all, or mostly, about Nina? Why not a science blog? Or one all about amazing bacteria? Or math (who am I kidding)? Or music, or food? Or, maybe most relevantly, none at all? 

Well ... first off, it's not given that I'm blogging. This is not the given part of this scenario. It's given that I'm parenting. It's not like I can choose, hmmm, I'm going to spend many hours each week engaged in some outside-of-my-work activity that can be funny, heartbreaking, isolating, connection-affirming, maddening, deadly dull, frustrating, and fascinating, all in the space of just 32 short minutes ... and gee, what is that activity going to be? Is it .... scuba diving? Music? No! It's parenting!  Once the child is here, we are parents every day, and at least in our case it was by choice, and greatly celebrated.

But John Barry's right about some things. It's boring to read about whether someone went to Starbucks or Second Cup, whether it was quiet enough there to work, what kind of coffee they had and what the people at the next table were shouting about on their cell phones. I get that. And I get that it can be pretty boring to see pictures of someone else's precious child doing whatever precious children do at that age. So why did I start a blog?

Well, I doubt John B could go back and read all the archives of www.alittlepregnant.com and tell me that it doesn't reach out far beyond a bunch of multimedia collections about that particular story, those particular children. Parenting is a huge part of human experience and people like to share it, maybe so as not to feel like they are the only ones whose toddlers have a fear of lawnmowers. It is generic and it's unique. Most everyone does it, but it seems to require a lot more creativity than we give it credit for, not to mention sensitivity and perceptiveness, upper arm strength, stamina, patience, and finely honed negotiation skills. I blog because I've been entertained, informed and moved by the blogs I've read, I blog for myself, to remember these rapidly-evaporating penguin days, to share my excuse for a "scrapbook" with our relatives who are all too far away to enjoy a paper scrapbook, not that I'd have the time and energy for that either, and I blog for the occasional amusement of my friends. And like everything else out there, in newspapers, magazines, blogs, videos and novels: if it's in a genre that bores someone, he doesn't have to read it. 

On that note:

Bye Head!

Sometimes I hear Nina say things, and I think: wow, I sure didn't know that word until I was an adult (and no, I'm not teaching my child any of those kind of words, if you were wondering). Or in some cases, at least quite a bit older than 23 months. For example:

1. We were walking to the pub

2. and on the way, there were some iron gates, behind which there were tightly linked fence-type things made of thin strips of something like bamboo, just like a sushi mat, which Nina pointed out with great interest. Yep. We have a toddler who knows what a sushi mat looks like, though not, admittedly, what it's for. My sushi-making days have hit a little hiatus.

3. In the morning Nina helps her papa make a cappuccino for me (a chuni!), and at the appropriate time, she announces: Nina tamp! Papa tamp! Nina's turn, papa turn. See Mummy coffee there! So yes, we have a todder who can tamp herself a shot a of espresso, though she doesn't drink it. 

4. And on a related note: coffee beans, coffee ground... cappuccino, for that matter. 

4. Marmite. Enough said. 

5. Banjzos, otherwise known as garbanzos or chick peas

6. Rotate (maybe I knew that one, but I'd be a little surprised)

7. A large class of food items that just weren't probably on the toddler scene in Canada in  19xx-whenever-I-was-a-toddler, ie a very long time ago, like hummous, pesto, maybe even cherry tomatoes, olives, definitely edamame (a big favourite), pistachios ... naan, chai

There are more, I'm sure. I certainly didn't entertain myself at 2 by asking Mummy to look for another plane taking off on youtube. The current favourite is this cool little one here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDmnjwbJrVM&feature=fvw

And I have to admit that it is pretty cool to see a functioning plane being unloaded off the back of an SUV. 

As far as language goes, we're firmly in the territory of full sentences, a large proportion of which have the following format: 

"Not Joejoe's drink, not Evie's drink, not Lyla's drink, not Mummy's drink, that's Nina's drink!"  "Not Papa sock, not Mummy sock, not Joejoe sock, not Cami sock, not Papa sock, not Eva sock, that's Nina sock!" 

Or, hiding under a towel or behind a very small sock, "Where Nina?" 

(moving sock slightly) "There's Nina!"

One more funny little thing. Yesterday we went to the pub to see some friends, including our friend Ed, and have a celebratory drink. Nina was so good, and played with her toys, talked to everyone, and ate her treats and snacks. As we left: "bye bye, Head!". Like I said, sometimes it's just not quite there yet.