To be filed under motherhood bliss.. no wait, under motherhood sux

 

Such is the way of toddlers that by the time I’d finished planning the post I was going to write about her heart-melting adorableness she’d gone and thrown my peg basket’s contents across the garden, told me to”Go Away Mummy!”, and furiously wiped her dirty foot on the wall in a frenzied act of provocation. I can’t believe the human race somehow depends on passing through this ‘stage’ of cognitive development in order to become the fully realised people we are as adults. There must be another way for the human brain to develop. (And here’s a nice little roadmap through the toddler’s mind from Looky, Daddy!)

So, these points wait for another day:

• lying in bed next to Lauca and listening to her murmur various lyrics as she winds down to fall asleep, like my very own game of ‘guess that song’ – my rules include guessing the song before she a) gets to the chorus (too easy) or b) moves on entirely to a new song.
• the way she sing-shouts the entire song of Do Re Mi as she walks.
• the ever so beautiful whispery way that she says “I might give you a kiss, Mummy”.
• those tight, enduring hugs that she gives and the I’ve been waiting two years for these “I love you”s.
• the way she checks with everyone if they’re feeling happy, although not so cute when I’m getting cross with her and she asks “Mummy happy?” just so she can laugh when I am say that I most certainly am not.
• hearing my turns of phrase being mimicked; sometimes in her version of me I sound very dorky and sometimes I sound kinda sweet. 
• when she used ‘disappointed’ in a sentence to describe the root of her tantrum.
• her imaginery friends; we’re constantly being informed that LuLu is here on the couch or that Bert and Ernie are going to join her for porridge this morning. 
• her elaborate descriptions of her house, not Mummy’s and Daddy’s house, but her house, which is full of lemonade apparently (because liquid sugar isn’t allowed in our house) and photographs of Mummy and Daddy on the wall.