Scooting To The Hairdresser

I took G for a haircut last week. Or, more accurately, G took herself, scooting along like this as I ambled along in front. We were only going a few streets from where we live, but it still took ages. So long in fact, I gave up after a while and had to pick both her and the scooter up, and walk to make sure we got there in time.

We would have got there sooner if G hadn't spent ten minutes refusing to put her helmet on before we got out of the house. Every time I went to fasten the clip of her strap tightly under her chin, she burst into tears and stomped off. On about the fifth time, I managed to distract her enough with something else to finally get her helmet on, and she realised it hadn't been anything worth getting upset about in the first place. Fifth time is better than five-hundredth time, but still, I don't intend to let her make a habit of it.

Wrong Daddy

I was away for the weekend, and I came back to find that G's infatuation with Thomas the Tank Engine continues. This is her tonight after she'd been reunited with her favourite little train. This morning, before I took her to nursery, there were tears at the breakfast table when I told her she wasn't allowed to take him with her.

"I want Thomas!" she repeated, wailing plaintively. I was unmoved, but only because I have developed the instinct that parents have for this sort of thing. A typical toddler tantrum is over in a minute or so, but the kind of epic tantrum that would ensue if Thomas got lost at nursery, well, that just isn't worth thinking about. "Thomas will still be here when you get back later," I reassured her as we got in the car, to which I got a very doubtful look in return.

As I went to pick G up, I was walking down the corridor towards her room when one of the nursery nurses came by leading a little boy, who was black. "Daddy!" he said, pointing towards me, hopefully. "No, I don't think that's your daddy," she replied, with the air of someone who had already had to say the same thing several times, probably in quick succession.

I didn't wait to hear if she went on to explain precisely why I was unlikely to be related to him. Besides, this all demonstrates another truth of parenting that I have discovered: three-year-olds may be able to talk more, but they still aren't the best recipients of any kind of logic.

Eye Drops

G has had conjunctivitis before, and this week she got a bit of it again. I spotted on Thursday that she had a red eye, and I got more suspicious on Friday morning when she slept for a full hour-and-a-half past her typical 7:15am wake-up (this has only been the usual time since she moved into a proper bed, I can no longer get away with leaving her in her cot until she dozes off for another hour, but that's another story).

Eventually she toddled in to my room, hiding behind her hair and with her arms out for a hug. Her right eye was full of the familiar yellowy gunk, so I called the local surgery. The nurse was happy enough to put a prescription behind the counter for us so I didn't even need to see a doctor when we got along there later in the morning. That was the good news. That bad news was that it was for the dreaded eye drops.

I remember hating having eye drops when I was little, and I can confirm that G likes the whole experience even less. Applying said drops to a writhing toddler is really a two-man job, but I've now developed a technique which is just about successful most of the time.

It involves putting G on her back across my knees, pinning her arms down with my left arm, while my right hand hovers vaguely over her eyes with the bottle. The drops don't have to go right into the eye. Seeing as she's got them tightly shut anyway, the inside of the bridge of the nose is ok, because they then trickle in when she eventually opens them. Well, more or less.

One day I'll film it so I can release an instructional video on YouTube. I wouldn't put us both through it every time but, you know, the drops really do work.

Tired Monday Morning

Dealing with babies and young children isn't nearly so difficult when they sleep at night. A lot of people have told me this. More than two years in to bringing up G, I have to agree. She's always been a very good sleeper, so on the rare occasions when she's not, it generally leads to widespread tears and whining. From me.

This morning was one such occasion. G seemed to be coming down with a bit of a cold last night, which may have been the reason why she kept waking up. Now that she's in a proper bed, instead of just drifting back off to sleep, she can now get up and toddle about. Which means either I or Mrs J has to get up and put her back into bed. G usually does this willingly enough, but a whole night of it left both her and me rather short of sleep when we got up for good at the shockingly early (for her) time of 7am.

Knowing I'd have to try to bring back the much lamented afternoon nap for one day only, the morning was all about attempting to keep G occupied so she wouldn't realise how tired she was. The picture shows us having a go at her fancy playdough set's "haircut" feature, which was enough to entertain her for quite a while.

Things only went downhill when I tried to get her into some warm clothes so we could go out in the cold to the local Post Office. G didn't want to put her shoes on. When I put them on for her, she took them off. When I put them on again, she lay face down on the floor and delivered her first-ever proper legs-kicking, arms-beating tantrum, which lasted throughout the time it took to get her into the car and defrost the windscreen (this was only about five minutes at the most, although it seemed like about an hour and a half).

G calmed down once we got there, although she wanted to come straight back home after. In an attempt to encourage her to rediscover naptime, I lay quietly on the sofa-bed in her room after putting her in bed. I could have sworn she started snoring almost straight away, but when I looked up I saw a familiar pair of eyes looking back at me, quizzically. I decided to go back to an old tactic of going downstairs, and ignoring her half-hearted cries until they stopped. It worked in the end, but I'm ready for a nap myself now.

A Very Slow Walk

We were away for the weekend, at a pre-Christmas get-together with friends in Shropshire. Being the only little one among two dozen people meant that G was often the centre of attention, which unsurprisingly kept her happy.

One less happy event was our attempt to get her to the nearest pub for lunch on Saturday. At last year's event, I had used a back carrier to get G there through the snow. But she's too big for that contraption now, so we were left with little choice but to take her pram.

I gave up routinely using G's pram months ago after she made it clear that, as a big girl now, she'd rather walk. This is fine for toddling about our local village where distances are short and we've rarely got to be anywhere in a hurry anyway. But walking a couple of miles is a different matter.

Saturday's trek to the pub started off well enough with G in the pram, but after a while she started fidgeting and whining and asking "Walk?" until we finally got her out and let her toddle. The picture shows G taking a close interest in one of the many puddles we encountered at this point.

But no matter how much fun it was watching G splash about, the facts were that it was very cold, and the pub was still some distance off. G refused point blank to go back in her pram, so I picked her up and started carrying her down the road. This led to a tantrum, accompanied by wriggling, sobbing and more cries of "Walk?" as I hurried along as quickly as I could. The tears stopped as soon as we reached the pub, and G realised there were lots of people besides mummy and daddy to dote on her.

It wouldn't have been so bad, but we went through exactly the same process on the return journey too. I'm looking forward to when she can walk a bit faster.

Little Madam

Here's G at today's Marsden Cuckoo Day, a festival held in a village near where we live to mark the beginning of spring. She had lots of fun toddling around amidst all the brass bands and morris dancers, and would have explored a lot more had I not had tight hold of the end of her reins. Keeping her on those is now a necessity when there are lots of people about.

In the past week or so G has also learned the word no. Or, as she often uses it: "NO!" This has coincided with an increase in the number of mini-tantrums she throws, usually complete with crying and whining, although also usually quickly over and forgotten about. But even though it's still fairly easy to distract her from whatever's upsetting her, thereby bringing any minor crying fit to a swift end, I know that isn't going to be the case forever.

"We're going to have to come up with a consistent way of dealing with this," said Mrs J, as G adopted her best little madam position while we were out having lunch earlier. And so we are. Although I imagine keeping her on reins at all times of the day is probably frowned on.