A mother first

With every day that passes, my big girl is becoming more articulate, more confident in conversation, more developed in her sentence structure and more hilarious. We're a dry, sarcastic humour kind of household, and she's starting to get that. Her ability to do stuff baffles me, and her little sister kicking around the house just opens my eyes to how much stuff these kiddies learn in the first years of their lives. It's astounding.

But with the articulate, chatty and bold little girl comes a more sophisticated trouble maker too; the ability to actively go against what you've asked, procrastination that would challenge my own, problem solving that makes me realise although she will always be my baby, she just isn't a baby any more.

At nap time, I found her standing on top of her beautiful wooden walker that has lived in her room for some time, about to straddle the baby gate and make her escape. I had to take a breath to stop myself from laughing, and force myself not to applaud her ingenuity. I had to tell her off for this one.

I had to be her mother first and her friend second.

She was not best pleased. But one day she may thank me for saving her from a tricky situation, and hopefully the walker will be good for her sister and to pass on to her own children. I can still be sentimental.

A mother first.

The Second Child

Last night I dressed my baby in a sleepsuit that was mine as a baby. It was, no doubt, from a baby boutique, such was my mother's taste, but it didn't stop her chopping off the feet when my legs got too long. My elder daughter wore it, and now the little one shall wear it too. I LOVE that we all have this hideous sleepsuit in common.

It's funny, as earlier D and I were talking about getting Effy's first outfits out of the loft for Lowen. We had to buy little things the Lowen, as everything of Effy's was too big, even the neutrals I bought were 0-3. Having initially rejoiced with my wallet at the prospect of never needing to buy new clothes-that-would-barely-be-worn-again, I suddenly felt guilty. Poor Lowen will spend at least the next 8 years in her sisters hand me downs. Tomorrow I will go and buy a pack of Next sleepsuits for her, so at least she has something of her own.

An only child, I never had hand me downs. Except for my bike, which had belonged to my male cousins before me. It was, obviously, blue. And I bloody hated it. 

It got me thinking about "second child syndrome". It made me think completely irrationally. Will she be forgotten about? Will she be resentful? Will she do things faster as she watches her sister do it? Will she be constantly compared to her sister? Will she struggle academically because her sister will always be doing SATs, GCSEs, A Levels first, and they're more important? Will I leave her sleeping upstairs and go out without her? Will she despise the hand me downs and pull the favouritsm card?!

Whatever she may think, my credit card is pleased that we have a seasonally appropriate, barely worn wardrobe in the loft. It's too good to be forgotten about. People always talk about "the second child" and "the middle child" in such a negative way, but there's plenty of good reasons too... 

For example, Lowen will learn from her big sister's mistakes. She'll have heard us count to three with a sanction in place. She may have witnessed first hand what happens if you draw on the sitting room floor, or put the potty on your head when it's got wee in it.

She'll benefit from our mistakes, our parenting fails, but also our parenting acalades and successes. 

She has her sisters' toys AND her own toys to play with.

She has enjoyed high class television such as Peppa Pig et al from a very young age. TV was banned until Effy was 1... That's education right there, that is...!

Most importantly, she had a confidant in her big sister. Always. She will never be lonely, or on her own. She'll always have a playmate, even when mummy and daddy are cooking or hanging the washing. She'll always have someone to blame.

And that has be worth more than a mini shopping spree for outfits she'll never remember instead of hand me downs.

Long live the hand me down, I say.

To the left, me and my dad, and to the right, Effy enjoying the clowns.

Guest post - Life Before Kids

It's an honour to have Rachel from activities4kidz here today guest posting while I'm out of action and I'm really grateful to her for taking the time to pen something for me. Today she's reflecting on how life has changed for her since having kids. There's certainly plenty here that I can relate to!

 

In my life before kids (now known as LBK), I was a twenty something primary school teacher who spent a fortune on clothes, shoes and nights out! I lived at home with my parents until I was twenty six weeks pregnant with our first, Harrison, so had no responsibilities! Now, with two boys under three, my life couldn't be any more different - and I wouldn't change it for the world! Seeing what my childless friends on Facebook are up to though made me think about LBK and what I miss most.

1) Sleep! I've gone now almost three years without a full, decent night's sleep. Harrison started sleeping through at seven months, by which point I was pregnant with Alex, and who sleeps the whole night when they're pregnant?! Alex is fifteen months old and is yet to sleep through. He rarely sleeps more than two or three hours at a time. Yawn....

2) Alcohol! The thought of going and queuing and paying for nightclub priced alcohol sounds like my worst nightmare these days, but what I'd give to go to the pub or have a glass (or bottle!) or three of wine at a friends house! I still breastfeed Alex so a big drinking session is out of the question. A glass of wine at home occasionally is about as much as it gets!

3) Drinking a hot drink whilst it's hot! 80% of the time my coffee is stone cold, or at best lukewarm by the time I've remembered it or had chance to drink it, and microwaved coffee is vile!!

4) Wearing clothes not covered in snot/milk/sick/good/other unknown substance! Yes, I've succumbed to the typical slummy mummy uniform of leggings and long tops, because after ten minutes whatever I wear is covered in something, and leggings don't need ironing!!

5) Listening to inappropriate music! I love hip hop, rap, rock - all full of sweary inappropriateness. I used to love blasting it out in the car. Now it's more likely to be Gangnam Style or the Hokey Cokey on repeat.

However, I have swapped those days for days full of giggles, cuddles, sloppy kisses and 'love you mummy'. I get to cuddle up to little warm bodies, see their faces light up when they discover something as simple as their own shadow, heat their little chatter about everything and anything, and that is more amazing than anything in my LBK.

Visit my blog http://activities4kidz.wordpress.com to see all the things we do at home, or follow me on twitter @activities4kidz

An open letter to my local supermarket

Dear Local Supermarket,

I am 34 weeks pregnant and the mother of one under two. I am exhausted, my hips hurt and feel as though I am wider than a bus. Getting my toddler (replace with slippery fish out of water) in and out of the car at the best of times is hard, but it's even more difficult when this belly is in the way. It requires me to open my doors as wide as possible, else I (we) just don't fit.

I am grateful that you provide 'parent and child' spaces for parents like me, they make getting my slippery fish in and out far easier, without risking damage to my car, or anyone else's. However, I am begging you to relocate your spaces away from the very front of your store. Please let me explain.

Today I made two visits to your store and while strapping in/un strapping the slippery fish, I saw three cars pull up in these spaces who had no baby or toddler with them. In fact when I looked in their cars, there was no evidence to suggest that they even had a young child.

I confronted one man, who claimed that having had two hip replacements, he was entitled to park there. His wife looked at me like I was dirt while making sarcastic, patronising noises at me.

Another man had gone by the time I was able to say anything. I left a note on his windscreen.

The ironic thing being that there were empty spaces in the disabled bays... And can you imagine the uproar if I had parked in a disabled space? After all, pregnancy and motherhood are not disabilities. We just don't fancy denting our neighbours' cars while we go about our weekly shop with our kids. I have no care for the space closest to the door. I will happily walk across the car park in the rain. I just want a wide space and I don't want to lose out to those who aren't entitled to use them.

While your spaces remain so close to the door they'll continue to be abused by the childless, the lazy, the people who don't seem to understand their purpose. Move them away and our struggling double hip-replaced colleagues won't fancy the walk. You won't enforce the rules, you don't have parking attendants. So please do something to help us parents out.

I'd love to know your thoughts on my idea and would be thrilled to discuss this with you further. You can email me at thursdayschild.fridaysthoughts @ gmail.com.

Yours,

Thursday's Child

Weaning Wednesday

Guest posting over at The Life and Times of Mummy Morkus today with my top ten tips for weaning as part of her #weaningwednesday series.

Go and take a look!

Preparing, greeting and beyond

Lots of guest posting for me during December, which is such a pleasure!

Today I'm absolutely over the moon to be over at The Oliver's Madhouse, talking about my top ten things I wish I'd known as a first time parent.

Testing

My daughter took her first unaided steps just after Christmas last year. Two or three steps between furniture and such continued until February, when she just let go and never looked back. She gets around on foot. Most of the time. Maybe I've been spoiling her and carrying her out of convenience and speed. Who knows.

This week we reached breaking point. Yesterday she point blank refused to walk to the park (circa two minutes at toddler speed) and I refused to carry her.

E planks on a wet pavement and screams for five minutes, unbothered by the fact that I am still on my way to the park. Proper face down, covered-in-mud-kind-of-planking. People walked by chuckling at the stand off between two incredibly stubborn Aries women. Eventually I gave in, put her in the car and went home. So much for making the most of my Fridays off and dry weather. 

I needed a plan. I resisted Dr Google for this one, however, and tough mum is out of the box. A kiddo somewhere between the 98th and 99th, by the age of 20 months weighs in excess of two stone. I cannot carry two stone and be 28 weeks pregnant. She has legs and can walk. End. So as of 7am this morning the "no carry" rule was enforced Chez Thursday's Child. Mostly successful. I am feeding her more fruit shaped snacks to keep her hunger induced grumpiness at bay and some bribery and coercion is needed. 

But we managed an early morning trip to the park, 99.9% on foot. I am sad that the colours of autumn are gone, but I do love an early winter morning. E enjoyed the ducks, the puddles and the swings. 

Let's hope that 99.9% is a figure we can stick to. Day one has set high expectations...

iTitle for Everything

On Sunday we spent the day in London celebrating D's birthday. The train price, even on a Sunday is disgusting (£89pp return for a 1 hour 20 journey!) so we drove down and parked at Stanmore and tubed it in to town. E adored her first tube journey and we all had a great day. She sat and coloured pictures of pizza in Prezzo, and having been so well behaved but on the turning point of bored,she showed off her knowledge of animals to a friend while engaging him in a few rounds of Peekaboo Barn. But the drive home was really tricky as she was too excited post Hamleys and a tube journey in the dark for a nap. She asked to watch doggies on the iPad (Hairy Maclary) but I soon became aware that she was happily navigating her way around the tablet, opening the apps she recognised as games, playing them, and then switching to something else, in the same way not so long ago I realised she had learned to switch between episodes I had downloaded for her.

I am impressed that my 20 month old can do this. I am in awe of how someone so young understands technology and how she can do it all without my help. I am thankful for the iPad and its entertainment skills in numerous situations.

Then yesterday morning I was reading an article on Parentdish about the phenomenon of the iMum; about how our smart phones stop us parenting effectively and giving our children our sole attention as we are lured into checking emails, a tweet, a Facebook message.

Guilty as charged. I have sat on my phone over lunch and E and I Facetimed daddy last night to find out how he was getting on after he went suit shopping. E knows the difference between my iPhone 5 and D's iPhone 4 and returns them if found to their rightful owner.

So are we developing iChildren too? I was talking with a colleague the other day, whose nephew attends the same nursery as E and is about 8 months older than her, about how after a trip to the park they returned home and to his utter astonishment his nephew flicked on the tele, got out a DVD, put it in the DVD player and kicked back on the sofa. Aged 2 and a half. Clever? Or a reflection on the age our children live in? When I picked E up from nursery last night they had the technology baskets out and 6 toddlers sat with phones to their ears or were pretending to take photographs with old cameras. E spends a lot of her day photographing the dollies apparently... I wonder where she learned that....? This, I understand, is evidence within the EYFS that out children have an understanding of the world around them. I'm sure that even as a child myself I would not have understood the world of 2013.

I was pondering this on the commute to work and found myself exclaiming to D "no wonder children can no longer do maths without calculators". I suspect there is truth in my outburst. Our children have so much technology at their fingertips they no longer need to go to the library to research, or use their fingers to add up, or sit and write thank you cards for their birthday presents. It's just there on their phones. My kids at school even record their homework in their phones these days, their planners sit forgotten about at the bottom of their bags. Their faces suggest physical meltdown when you confiscate their phone for the day because you caught them BBM-ing at the back of your classroom.

There is part of me that senses there is an element of inevitability here. Life uses technology to function these days and so I have no intention of taking away the iPad, the iLearning, the iConvenience of taming a fractious child in a busy restaurant. Ultimately they're going to need these skills in an ever more savvy world. And I can be sure there'll be a class set of iPads in her classroom when she starts school. But I'll be dammed if I'm going to be the parent getting calls home about the confiscated phone whose child seemingly has no ability to function without the world at her finger tips. We limit screen time here, be it TV and films or engaging in a counting game on the iPad. I hereby pledge that I am going to put my inner iMum away more often. And I will continue to strive for giving E the experiences we enjoyed as children, when iWorld didn't exist yet. Books, libraries, the abacus, Lego, farms, zoos, ruined castles, scooters, mud, grazed knees, baking and the good old fashioned pen and paper.

After all, we didn't turn out so bad. And I can still just about navigate my way around a computer.

Are you on Facebook? I'm trying to stay iSavvy and use my page a little more! 

Come and give me a like!

In pursuit of the peacock

One of the things on the pre-baby bucket list was to get out and about as much as I possibly could with E. She treated me to a bit of a lie in this morning, allowing me a cup of tea in silence after D left for work... Bliss... So I treated her to a slightly damp (OK, it ended up pouring with rain, we were pretty soaked if truth be told) treat out to Kirby Hall to search for conkers. I was more excited than her about this, obviously. 

We gave up our National Trust membership in favour of English Heritage membership at the end of the summer for two reasons. Firstly, we're lucky to have a lot of EH nearby, and less NT. Secondly, more EH properties are "ruins" and therefore there are no expensive vases to be pulled off tables and broken by overexcited toddlers. Kirby Hall is undoutably my favourite locally, because of it's versitility. When it's dry there are gardens to explore and grounds to run around in. What remains of the house makes for a great game of hide and seek with nooks and crannies to nosey around in even when it's raining and there are always some super confident peacocks to pursue, if you're 18 months old and think they're oversized chickens. And, luckily for me us, there is an avenue linked with conker trees, for your conkering pleasure. And it's all free when you're a member. Fantastic.

So we threw on our crocheted hats for their debut trip out, warmest jumpers and wellies and set off. On arrival we were greeted by a peacock, who, it would seem was named Tyler. (Tyler is E's best friend at nursery, I think. She talks about him ALL THE TIME) So, after a slightly nervous chat with him, we started looking for autumnal treasure. It wasn't hard to find, the place was littered with them, but E was really curious and fascinated about what I assume is her first experience of conkers. She enjoyed picking some up that had already parted company with their little shells and popping them in a bag to take home. She disliked the really spiky shells, but we soon found some that were smoother that she was able to pop open to discover what was inside. The novelty however was certainly in how many she could find and put in the bag. While counting isn't quite on the cards for us yet, this would have been a fabulous opportunity to do so... The spiders at home are packing their bags as we speak.

By this point however it was pouring so we got inside to have a run around. Interestingly the only other visitors were also mums with their toddlers! There were lots of big windows to look out of and lots of stairs to climb (each one anticipated with readyyyyyyyyyyyy, steadyyyyyyyyy, gah!), so it by no means felt that we had had a wasted journey. Conker collecting had taken longer than I had anticipated due to the sheer number of them for the picking, so we were soon headed home for lunch. At least I thought we were heading home, but E had other ideas as we have to repeat the conker search on the way back too, this time with less concern about spiky shells and giving a couple a taste test. Needless to say we were pretty mucky by the time we were almost back at the car, and the rain was coming down in sheets. Nevertheless, E took it upon herself to chase 'Tyler' around the car park for several minutes in the rain before eventually choosing a snack over him. Thank goodness we had a welly bag and some wet wipes in the car! 

Before I had E, one of my biggest hang ups about doing the parent thing was having to go out in the rain, my hair going frizzy and getting filthy. I've always hated having dirty hands, even as a child not much older than E, and I can't STAND it when the back of your trousers gets soaked though. Its another of those things that I've had to embrace, especially now she is bigger and soaking wet with frizzy hair and soil all over hands and face is the name and the game... But what I've realised is that she doesn't care if my hair looks a state or if my mascara has run down my face, and she doesn't feel like she's being judged for eating stones or conkers while sitting in a pile of damp leaves. She's having a great time and some of the best memories are made this way. We can go home, dry off, and put our pj bottoms on after the fun has been had, and she benefits far more from exploring outside than going to softplay again because the weather's a bit miserable. Even if my jeans are damp, she's loving spending the time with me, and I am loving the time with her... This is what childhood is all about right?

It's funny because now I look back at the last 18 months and there have been some awesome parenting moments... I miss that squishy little new born, and am excited about doing that bit again soon... But some of my best parenting moments have been days like today, and I'm so looking forward to E being able to take her little brother and sister back in two autumns time and for her to start teaching them what it's all about too.

And anyway, I totally rock frizzy hair. Fact.

Set up for the fall

A new pregnancy brings with it a lot of decision making. Birth plans. Names. Nursery colours. Prams. Childcare. When (if) to return to work. Routines. To find out what you're having or stay team yellow. 

The list is endless. 

And while there were a lot of decisions to make, one thing that needed no debate was that I would breastfeed my baby. People would ask if I'd thought about it. The midwife ticked the breastfeeding box in my green notes without further discussion. Friends, colleagues, whoever felt it acceptable to ask nodded approvingly. The NCT classes scooted over it offering a few tips along the way. The nursing bras were purchased. I was ready to undertake this completely natural thing, the one thing that only I could do for my baby.

People said it might be tricky to get the hang of. People said to keep going if it was hard going at first. No one mentioned that it might not happen. In my head, I had images of skipping out of hospital with my newest most precious thing, just hours old, and returning home to the sofa without so much as looking at the microwave steriliser that someone had let us borrow. 

My perceptions and ideals had set me up for a huge fall. Looking back I can only describe those first few days as a nightmare. A nightmare that eighteen months on leaves me devastated, heartbroken and guilty.

Her arrival into the world was traumatic for both of us. An unconventional labour that no one could make head nor tail of, missing waters, back to back... A large head and a small pelvis, an emergency Caesarian, ten minutes of tugging to get her back out of where she was stuck and an anaesthetic that wore off before the ordeal was over. A haemorrhage to top it all off.

Needless to say that 8 hours after she was born, everyone was concerned that she had no interest in latching on, but my (not so) little bundle was shocked. I was shocked. My attempts to hand express were fruitless and the midwife gave her formula. We slept well. And for the next 3 days in hospital she bobbed on and off, fussed, suckled a bit and fell asleep. She didn't seem unhappy. Frustrated, as her head flopped around as if she couldn't get comfortable, but contented enough to sleep. We went home on day 3. And things got more difficult. My milk came in but I never felt full and the quantity was pitiful. Her nappies didn't feel all that full. I knew something was wrong but D desperately tried to convince me it was ok. Then my midwife came to visit on day 5. She said she'd never seen such an alert little newborn. Her colour and tone were good. Then she popped her on the scales... 8lb 3. Nearly 17% less than her birth weight of 5 days previous. 

Suddenly the world stopped. We were on our way to SCBU. They were expecting us. And the next 18 hours turned into a haze. She was dehydrated and her kidneys were poorly indeed. Desperate attempts to pump for her showed that there was next to nothing there for her.

My daughter was starving and it was all my fault. 

The following morning and 3 hourly formula feeds overnight gave the doctors the results they wanted. Her levels of hydration had improved enough and they were happy to discharge us with a plan to combi feed.

For five more days I tried to feed her and top her up with a bottle. But the quantity I produced became less and less. She got angrier, more frustrated, more fussy, more unsettled. At day 10, I made the decision that it was time to stop. I cried. Every time I made a bottle I wept and mourned for this thing her and I were mean to have. That thing that every mother should be able to do for her child. The only thing that made it easier was seeing that my little girl was thriving, even if it wasn't my doing.

And now I almost find myself fighting a pro formula campaign... I'm not anti breastfeeding, but some of us are not bottle feeders by choice. And formula isn't hurting our children and it certainly isn't the poison of which some uber-pro breastfeeding mothers have tried to tell me. It doesn't make me a bad mother. The options were formula or starvation and I know which option would have been frowned upon. Even as I stood in the milk kitchen in SCBU sterilising a bottle, I was surrounded by posters bigging up the benefits of breastfeeding. Nobody told me it might not work out. No one even pointed out that the stress and trauma and specifics of of her birth might have had a huge impact on the situation I found myself in. The pro breast feeders told me I hadn't tried hard enough, that I'd given up too easily. No one wanted to admit that maybe it just wasn't to be for me and E.

I have spent too much time being told I don't understand because I didn't breastfeed. I have spend too many hours wanting to shout from the rooftops that none of it was my choice. I have cried far too many tears. But my daughter is testament to the fact that formula isn't poison, whatever people might say.

Where am I going with this?

A new pregnancy brings with it a lot of decision making. Birth plans. Names. Nursery colours. Prams. Childcare. When (if) to return to work. Routines. To find out what you're having or stay team yellow. 

The list is endless. 

And those around me are most interested in whether I will breastfeed this time. Like I made the active choice not to last time. 

My answer is that I have no idea. I daren't set myself up for the fall. I daren't create the expectations. I don't want the pressure, and I don't want to feel like I have failed should it not work out. In case I just wasn't made to do this. But there's something else. Would you do something for one child you didn't do for another? I'm just not sure I can get over the guilt. I'm not sure I can give this baby something I couldn't give their sister. I'm not sure that's fair.

So for now I'm settling on not knowing. What I do know is that I've always made the best decisions I could have by my daughter.

When the duck doesn't take to water and other stories

Raising your child is full of milestones. You're always moving towards something, they're always achieving something, you're always excited about them, or apprehensive about them or occasionally dreading them... Just as I write a friend has posted this status on Facebook:

Daughter can now open doors. Uh oh.

Milestones can present us with new challenges. Some challenges are fun and some are... challenging. But irrespective of the frustration it may cause, underneath it's another reason to be proud of them.

Some of these milestones aren't just about our children achieving. Some are emotional hurdles for us as parents too. I remember the first night I left E in her crib and went back downstairs at 8:30pm rather than just going to bed with her. I was glued to the monitor, terrified that she'd stopped breathing. Then at 10 weeks she was too big for that crib and we moved her into her room. I sobbed and sobbed and almost mourned for my tiny (well, as tiny as she ever was!) baby who seemed to be growing up so fast. Fast track to Christmas and my little girl was starting to walk. She was so independent, even if a little unsteady and always busy. I was GUSHINGLY proud but it was just another thing to get my head around. They don't need us in quite the same way forever. The list goes on. When we said good bye to bottles I was overjoyed that I could perhaps have a KitchenAid in 

place of a steriliser, but it was just another tick on the sheet signifying that we were getting into toddler-dom, waving goodbye to our baby days. The list goes on... The muslins being packed away, buying a toothbrush, when she started seeming to enjoy "helping out" with chores... Watching her care for her dolly. All amazing, heartwarming, but all a little bit sad. E has taken everything in her stride. I have been more worked up about all this than her! 

However this week we've come up to a milestone that I've not been apprehensive about. I've not been sad that the time has come. I felt that she was ready and I needed to support the girls at her nursery in something that was becoming a bit of an issue.

It was time for a bed.

I'm sure I've mentioned before but the one thing I will be a boasty-pants about is how good a sleeping E is. No nonsense, no messing around, sleeping though from very early on. So to me if didn't occur to me that swapping the cot for a toddler bed would be an issue.

And it probably could have been a lot worse. But night one was a nightmare. 

Despite an initial excitement for what seemed to be a small indoor trampoline, when it came to leaving her to it last night she screamed. And when I eventually felt the need to go back in, madam had found every tactic under the sun to delay my leaving again. Books. More books. Shall we read "un-ooor", she asked, holding up one finger, often used for negotiating TV shows on iPlayer and biscuits. Having read several more than "un" I went to leave again. Cue hysterics, door slamming... Eventually my husband found her asleep in her armchair. I transferred her, and she slept well until 4:30 this morning. I cannot recall what happened in that hour, but the travel cot was deployed at 5:30. She slept until 8:30, resulting in a lie in... Every cloud. 

So, options. Put the cot back up. Persevere. Bed guard. Run away and hide.

I decided that I couldn't just put it away. Mama H doesn't give up. She will win! So, I enjoyed lunch with friends and left with a borrowed bed guard... It was assembled pre bed (after she awoke from napping in her bed... She just went down asleep from the car...) and at bed time it seemed to dramatically change her opinion on the matter. Even if it made it trickier to get in and out of. 

I left her to it at 7pm. There was some shouting. Cow came over the stair gate. She made my feel bad repeatedly calling "mimi", furniture was rearranged and the door was slammed. It went silent at 7:45 and when I popped up she was reading in her arm chair. I returned at 8:10 fully expecting to find her snoring like Grandpa in the chair again. But no...

SHE WAS IN HER BED! And I was so elated I took a photo and then logged straight on to blog about it.

I know this isn't the end of the journey. I know that tomorrow night will still be tricky. I am fully ready for a 4am wake up tomorrow. But I feel like we've made progress and actually, I think my instincts were right. She was ready for this. I must trust my mummy instincts... She just didn't fancy it all that much to start with... And why not, those cot bars are all she's known since we left those plastic hospital cots behind.

And of course, I am AS EVER, gushingly proud of you, little E. As ever. Sweet dreams.

"Grandpa's prerogative" syndrome

When E was tiny, there were many elements to our parenting that I guess were quite militant. We weren't in a strict routine, but we lived by EASY (The Secrets of the Baby Whisperer by Tracy Hogg) but there was always bath time before bed, we never came back downstairs and went straight to bed after. Rules we still follow today, actually, but bedtime is more flexible, there's probably a book involved and it's inevitably made a little less calm by chasing a frantic nearly 17 month old around her room trying to get a nappy on. I never let her sleep on me as a baby, I'd always put her down if she fell asleep on a bottle or when having a cuddle. I'd never wake her (unless it was for a doctors appointment!) and I was always wary of throwing her out of balance or disturbing the routine she fell into herself. Her timings were predictable and she slept through very early on. A few of my friends were critical of my approach but on the whole, at least to my face, no one seemed to bat an eyelid to the presence of our good friend Captain Routine. I guess I was terrified of rod-making; I was going back to work 'proper' (ie the start of the academic year) when E was five months old and I wanted to know where we were at for the sake of nursery and her Nana and Toggy who used to look after her once a week. And I think, now we're long into toddler-dom, I didn't make any rods. She still likes predictability, but she is more flexible and more adaptable and I guess because of that we've relaxed our ways a little. Some things wont change. No rocking or cuddling to sleep (unless she's poorly, then most rules go out of the window). Crying it out, to an extent, at nap times is acceptable, in my view. If you throw your lunch on the floor, then there is no alternative. I'm sure some people will read this and think I'm a big meanie-pants... But it works in our household and it's always lovely when we're told how well-behaved, polite and well adjusted our daughter is. Or when friends ask for our advice for their own kids. I feel satisfied that thus far, we've done a good job.

Ask me again when we're in the terrible twos. I may retract that statement.

It's the summer holiday, which gives us the opportunity to visit people we don't get to see in term time and be a little more blase about it not mattering if she doesn't transfer from the car to her bed at 10pm without a milk-stop because we've not got anything to do tomorrow, and we've been enjoying having this time. It's a shame that the poorly household stopped play on a few of our earlier plans, but such is life with kids, I guess. We've all been there.

So, with this new found flexibility, I'm getting to grips some stuff that the mere though of would have horrified me a year ago. It's what I describe as "grandpa's prerogative" syndrome. The stuff that you let them get away with because they're not at home, they're in the company of people who love them but don't get to see them very often, you really don't fancy a meltdown during Sunday lunch service at the pub and it's a real treat etc.

A visit to a friend's parents' house for a BBQ the other week saw E eat her entire dinner standing up on a garden chair. But she ate LOADS, she didn't feed it to the dog and went home with a full belly. At lunch celebrating my dad's unnamed milestone birthday she drank two fruit shoots, both of which she downed in one at the time of consumption and ate only the scampi from her dinner plate, followed by dipping some fries in grandpa's gravy. That's not how we roll at dinner time, is it? Rearranging the entire greenhouse and moving all the bamboo rods to an unnamed location in the garden. Snacking on dolly mixture. Giving up on an attempt at an afternoon nap. You get my drift. I have found myself being surprisingly laid back about the lot of it.

What I do worry about is that I'm too laid back in how we react to 'naughtiness', or boundary testing, or learning manners. How we all chuckle at the indignant "NO" I get in response to asking her if I can change her nappy while we're enjoying the sunshine in the garden. It is funny, but what message does that give her? How we find it endearing that she's mastered the puppy dog eyes and just can't refuse her. Finding the balance of fairness now that she's learning to use "please" unprompted. It's easier to manage at home, but when we're out I feel myself letting things go far more than I'd ever have liked. Sometimes I think I really ought to stop worrying about it. Sometimes I think I need to get a grip and remember that I'm her parent first. I'm sure this is just another of many conundrums.

Step back for a moment, and take a look. Most of the time she will sit and have her nappy changed, and she's started to ask for nappy changes sometimes. Most of the time she happily eats her dinner sat down in her highchair, even if the dogs do get some. A few dolly mixture never hurt anyone and I must continue to promote these beautiful manners she's using. Even if that means sharing my yogurt with her. She's an entertainer, a comedienne, caring little soul who has finally decided that she will call me 'mimimummy'. I can live with that. 

What a joy you are, E. What a joy you are.