Tag / ramona

by Alexandra Roumbas Goldstein

Toddler Logic

My daughter showed me a leaflet with five very different monsters on it.

R: “Which one do you like best?”
Me: “That yellow one.”
R: “No, that’s Daddy’s favourite.”
Me: “Okay, that orange one.”
R: “No, that’s my favourite.”
Me: “The green one?”
R: “No, that’s someone else’s favourite.”
Me: “How about blue?”
R: “No. That’s someone else’s favourite, too.”
Me: “Purple, then.”
R: “Yes.”
Me: “What if I like the purple one and the yellow one.”
R: “No! You can’t like two monsters at the same time!”
Me: “What if Daddy and I both like the yellow one best? I’m sure he won’t mind.”
R: “No! It’s Daddy’s favourite. Can you guess which one your favourite is?”
Me: “Purple?”
R: “Yes! Well done, Mummy.”

That taught me.

by Alexandra Roumbas Goldstein

Happy Birthday, Dear Pickle

birthday 2 candleI am now mother to a two year old. That is all kinds of weird. But also all kinds of brilliant. The funny thing is, I was really terrified of this stage, but while it’s nothing like easy, it is less horrifying, and far more enjoyable, than I expected. The tantrums, while louder and more stubborn than before, are also more avoidable; when they’re old enough to have things explained to them, and can have more forewarning, you can head certain issues off at the pass.

Reading a book and sneaking a cuddle have always been wonderful things, but now they’re even more wonderful because she’s so engaged with what’s going on. She’s memorised her current favourites (The Tiger Who Came to Tea, Slinky Malinki and Wocket in my Pocket this week) and can narrate them aloud even with no book in front of her. It’s almost like I’ve accidentally trained a Victorian child to read poetry to the class! What’s really funny is she keeps in my inflections too, so it’s like listening to a slightly scrambled radio recording of myself being beamed scratchily in from somewhere in the wilds of Eastern Europe:

Shlinky Malinki was blackern black!
A TALKING and YURKING aventchrus cat!
He had bright yeyyow eyes,
A WAR-bing wayul,
An’ kink at end of his YONG black tayul.

I could listen to this all day. Or this:

Once there was a yittle girl called SO-phie, and she was having tea wiv her Mummy  in the KITCH-en. Sudd’ly, there was ring at the DOOR.

Sophie’s Mummy said, “I wonder who can THAT can be?”…

When she recites “It can’t be DADDY because he’s got his KEY”, she tends to interject “a other one Daddy”, in case I think the book is about her Dad. “A other one” always makes me laugh; her bed time snuggle toys are called Weasel and A Other One Weasel.

She was very excited about her birthday, and kept announcing “is gonna be my BIRTHDAY soon, and I will have a birthday cake and blow out candles” – which is indeed exactly what happened. In fact we made a cake together on the day before, which then got chopped up and sent off to nursery, and then I made cupcakes the following day, which she enjoyed and which went down well with all the family. I’ve finally decided that life is too short for making frosting – I enjoy the baking bit so much more – and made Hummingbird Bakery recipe red velvet cupcakes* topped with piped on canned Betty Crocker vanilla icing. I then got out my decorating stash – red glitter, candy polka dots, jelly diamonds and sprinkles – and even used the mini chopper to blitz the thin slices I’d ended up with when levelling a couple of the cakes and sprinkled the crumbs on as a decoration.

The results can be seen here:

birthday cupcakes - red velvet and vanilla icing

And the ritual candle-blowing here. I wasn’t helping, honest:

Pickle Birthday Candles Alexandra R. Goldstein

I hadn’t intended to get Ramona very much for her birthday as she’s only two and has a full complement of grandparents and other relatives ready to spoil her, but I ended up going shopping that morning and splurging without quite meaning to. The official present from Mummy and Daddy was her first Peppa Pig playset (she loves playing with some her cousins have), but she also now has some gorgeous new clothes from the fantastic Tootsa MacGinty – I can only afford them in the sale, but it’s worth the wait! – and a really lovely range at M&S (I want these trousers in my size, too! Including the adjustable waist for after cake…!). She’s also already got stuck into reading Meg on the Moon (or, as she called it, “Meg Goes to the Moon”) and Dr Seuss’s ABC. What can I say? She’s a lucky pickle.

Even luckier, she’s actually having a party in a couple of weeks when more family can join us, so she’ll be getting more birthday cakes than years she’s been alive. Which sounds like a very good deal to me.

Two years of brilliant. And so many more to come. We’re all very lucky.

*My mother has given me two excellent pieces of baking advice (other than the obvious – Know Your Oven**) which have stood me in very good stead. 1) Unless your recipe genuinely depends on using butter, use Stork instead. 2) Unless your cake is supposed to be dense, use self-raising flour for everything, even when it says plain and you’re adding more raising agents. Fluffiest. Cakes. Ever. Trust me.

**No, really. I baked the first cake at 160 for 22 minutes, and the cupcakes for 13 minutes, again at 160. I just know that for most sponge-type cakes that’s the optimal temperature for this oven. Cookies are a very good way to find out if your oven heats unevenly, as you’ll be able to see the overcooked ones, and can open the oven door to check them which you can’t do with a cake.

Thus endeth the very amateur baking lesson. 

by Alexandra Roumbas Goldstein

Ramona and the Great Toddler Toothbrushing Wars

Excuse me while I indulge in some blogging that is really only going to be of interest to anyone who has primary caregiving duty for a teeny, tiny person. But I dare to believe that to those people this might actually be a worthwhile read.

See, parenting is one of the very few cases where anecdotal evidence can actually be helpful. Of course, only to a point – you have to then apply what you’ve learned to your own child, who is both exactly the same as and completely different from every other child, but sometimes just knowing another parent was in the same leaky, rickety boat and managed (even temporarily) to shift to a shiny new seaworthy dinghy is all you need to feel a lot better. So here goes.

Having politely complied with having her teeth brushed since they first started coming through, around 11 months, it wasn’t until around 22 months that any issues with toothbrushing flared up. First it was wanting to do it herself, but then not wanting to do it. Then it was complaining that her gums hurt (understandable; she’s not got all those teeth yet). Then “my tongue hurts!” and refusing to even do the bit of the process she’d always approached with some gusto: eating the toothpaste. Some nights she’d be okay, some not, and it gradually got worse.

For a while we ended up basically having to brush by force, which made me feel like a rotten, rotten parent who was creating more fear around toothbrushing instead of less. I reached my limit on about the third occasion on which I had to resort to this, when afterwards she sniffled at me that “I cried and said no but Mummy brushed my teeth.” The words sent absolute shivers down my spine – what the Hell was I teaching her?  Things were going to change, starting the next night.

I called out for advice on Twitter, and got the following recommendations:

  • Nicer tasting toothpaste (I suspected myself this might help – perhaps the Colgate Milk Teeth was just too minty and was burning her tongue? I find the same with some grown-up toothpastes).
  • A reward chart (too young?)
  • Telling her she wouldn’t ever be allowed sugary things to eat or drink again (I don’t think she has the concept of consequences that aren’t absolutely immediate down well enough for this one; also, it’s impractical as I’m not the only one who feeds her).
  • Funny songs / rituals around the toothbrushing – brushing toys’ teeth (she also brushes their eyes, noses and ears…), applying toothpaste herself etc.

In the end, I went for a combination of the first and last. Ashley brought home some Cars-themed “fruit punch” flavoured toothpaste which, to my mint-honed gnashers, tastes absolutely vile and sickly, and smells it too. Ramona squeezed a little on her finger and made me taste it first (small empress that she is), and then hesitantly popped some in her mouth while I made effusive yummy noises.

“Mmmm, yummy,” I prompted.

“Mmmm, yucky,” she replied.

Still, curiosity had got the better of her – particularly as the toothpaste is a deep blue instead of boring white – and she kept sampling it until we had to risk a big, waily tantrum taking it away.

The next couple of nights were a bit hairy, as she much preferred applying the toothpaste to her finger than her toothbrush, but we worked out a deal whereby if she brushed her teeth thoroughly herself using the brush, her reward could be a small glob of toothpaste on her finger as a treat to munch on. She started requesting that I sing one of her flavour-of-the-month songs at the same time, and that’s become part of the ritual too: “Mummy will sing X while you brush your teeth… oh, good brushing! Now you can have a bit on your finger.”

To try and cement this progress and add more fun to proceedings, I treated her to a new toothbrush today after a visit to the Disney Store (during which I was very proud to note she behaved impeccably). Near bedtime I produced the surprise from my bag and she carefully examined her new Mickey brush, which flashes a red light for two minutes to aid brushing. She’s still a bit small for that feature to be anything but a fun game, but she carried on intermittently chewing the brush / brushing her teeth right through all our bedtime lullabies, only surrendering the brush to actually get into bed.

I’m keeping my fingers tentatively crossed that a combination of a more palatable paste and creating more fun around the brushing itself has done the trick… let’s wait and see.

by Alexandra Roumbas Goldstein

Reflections on Ramona: 23 months (The Disney Edition)

Honestly, I’m not sure how much this is going to be about Ramona and how much this is going to be about shopping. All of this happened today, so it’s all kind of rolled into one in my head, and I don’t have the inclination to separate it into two posts.

You can cut straight to the shopping if you prefer – it’s where the photos start. First, Ramona:

My tiny Pickle is not so tiny anymore – of course, she hasn’t been for a while. I’m occasionally blindsided by how weird it isn’t to have proper conversations with her, and this week we even had to start introducing the idea of naughty steps and consequences for bad behaviour that haven’t really made sense before. As with most children she is blissfully angelic and unconscionably demonic, generally within the same ten minutes. As I often say, I wouldn’t swap her forthright knowledge of what she wants, and her determination for getting it, for any kind of deferential wallflowery, but it would be lovely if she didn’t turn the former on me quite so often…

Biting is occasionally becoming an issue where it never was before, and after a particularly painful one in the middle of a tantrum today I got seriously miffed. Rather than stay in the room and lose my temper, I plopped her down, summoned her dad and left to cool off. I still felt bad, because I know it was a punishment for her to be separated from me (how arrogant that sounds! But that’s motherhood for you…), but I thought that was better than me behaving like an idiot in her presence. I came back down after a few minutes, she apologised, we had a massive cuddle and talked about why we don’t bite, and all was well.

And actually, that was the low point in what was a really impressive day for her. (Here’s where the Disney stuff starts too). We popped to Westfield, and she does love to visit the Disney Store, but last time we had to tear Mickey from her vice-like grip and cart her, wailing, out of the House of Mouse. This time, I did some preparatory groundwork, talking about not touching, only looking, and not being able to take things home. I was still prepared for a possible meltdown, but none came. She padded about happily, keeping her sticky paws to herself, identified her various friends – “Mickey! Daisy! Don-old! Goo-feeee!” – and was then content to leave after a few minutes, with a smile on her face. We rode up and down some elevators, and she even let me do a bit of shopping…

So, the upshot is I now have five Uniqlo / Disney t-shirts. It started with the bow one I wear in the photos on this very blog, and then I bought another four today. In my defence they are just £7.90 each, and fit me really well. They’ve got a really long body, which I often find is a huge problem with t-shirts – I had to stop buying from Threadless, because they looked like they were cutting me in half as I’m both tall and generous of belly – and the designs are a little bit more like what you get in Disney Parks, than what you get in the Disney Store. They’re also quite generously sized. I’m an M&S 14, and I comfortably fit the Medium.

Here they are:

These two are from the Uniqlo Uncovered range. They’re very slightly longer, and have a textured background colour, and you’ll find them on hangers in the shop. They also have “Uniqlo Uncovered” in smallish caps across the upper left hand side of the back of the shirt.

These two are from the standard Uniqlo Disney range, which you find on the shelves. Lots of these designs come in a range of background colours (for example, the lemon yellow Minnie bow one I’m wearing in the photos is also available in pink, as is the blue t-shirt in this photo).

And here’s me looking like a classic doofus in the mirror in the Snow White one.

In spite of my enthusiastic acceptance of the WDW ride’s overdue retirement, I still have a lot of love for Disney’s first feature length film, and I’m a sucker for a castle.

(The teapot necklace, by the way, is from Jelly Button Jewellery, which I absolutely love).

Naturally, the quirky attention to detail is typical of both Disney and a Japanese brand, and extends even to the delightfully cheesy labels:

Between every once upon a time and every happily ever after lies a fabled kingdom of art and imagination. Journey to this magical place, together with Disney and UNIQLO, and discover the charming characters, faraway places and treasured artwork of the world’s favorite storytellers. After all, you’re never too old to believe that dreams really do come true.

Love it. Love it all. And I especially love how it’s easier and easier to be a Disney fan and get the news and the fun stuff without actually being able to afford to go to WDW (I don’t love that last bit so much).

To top it all, Ramona started singing along to It’s a Small World today, though she’s loved the song since she was tiny. I actually started crying, to Ash’s amusement.

There are probably people out there who would be absolutely horrified that I was so pleased and proud, but I think I can cope with their disapprobation.

And now, back to our scheduled messages.

I am finding that I’m enjoying the toddler phase quite a lot more than I thought I would, while at the same time finding it terrifying and stressful and exhausting. I just really like being able to get to know Ramona’s personality now that she’s showing it in spades. She keeps me on my toes, bringing up things I thought she’d forgotten or not understood, and thoughtfully repeating back to me what she thinks about it all.

We occasionally find ourselves at loggerheads, but I am determined to make sure to do my sworn duty as a parent and behave like the (literally) bigger person. I won’t let it drag on, I won’t just get tangled up in being a grumpy bugger and I will always be sure to end the day with stories, snuggles and cuddles. The last thing she hears every night that I’m the one to put her to bed is “I love you”, and I tell her about a million times a day, as does Ash. To have her unexpectedly pootle over from her blocks or toys and give a hug and a dazzling smile before announcing “I yuv you!” cuts straight to the heart every time.

Plus, to my completely biased and inexpert mind, the kid is absolutely freakin’ brilliant when it comes to speaking. I do wish I could erase “I want…” from her vocabulary, but with prompting she is aware of the uses of “please” and “thank you”. She gets jokes, such as when I pretended there was a monster behind me and it turned out to be her, and runs around shouting things like “Mummy thought it was a monster but it was you!” (she still generally mixes up “me” and “you”, endearingly). She’s not quite so brilliant with names of relatives she doesn’t see often, but then neither am I. That’s when you get a situation like this:

Ouma, pointing at Auntie Linda: “Ramona, who’s that lady?”
Ramona: “Uncle Bernard.”

Which has a brilliance all its own, frankly.

I’m not sure how I’m going to get my head around having a two year old, but it ought to get all straightened out in my mind by this time next year.

by Alexandra Roumbas Goldstein

Reflections on Ramona: 22 months

I don’t know what happened, but at some point when I wasn’t looking, someone took away my baby and replaced her with a little girl. There are so many ways to define a very young child as a toddler, and all of a sudden Ramona seems to have hit the classic definition between the eyes.

The most obvious symptom is the fake tantrum. I fill a blue cup with water, and she flattens herself on the floor yelling “Nooo! Nooo! PINK CUP! MILK!” and then pertly looks over her shoulder to check if I’m impressed. She seems genuinely shocked when I say “Ramona, I know you’re not really sad, or crying” and, at the moment, seems to shrug and give up as if to say “well, it was worth a try”. I wonder how long before she starts digging in harder.

She’ll wander about whining “what’s wrong?!” until she gets asked, at which point it becomes evident that, in fact, nothing is. She keeps claiming to be hungry, which is a tricky one because I don’t like to ignore that, but I’m beginning to work out when it’s genuine and when it’s not.

Her memory is formidable. She can narrate the vast majority of The Tiger Who Came to Tea and could do after about the fourth reading. (And the tiger eating all the sandwiches in one big mouthful – OWP! – is the new supper wriggling away in terms of sheer hilarity.) She’s also really into building, which is nice. I get shanghaied into building wooden block “pyramits” more often than not, and then we take turns trying to balance blocks one on top of the other in a tower. If we succeed, it goes something like this:

Ramona: “WE DID IT WE DID IT!”
Me: “Well done, Pickle.”
Ramona: “Is gonna fall over?”
Me: “When you knock it over, yes.”
Ramona: (knocking it over) “It fall over. Oh dear. Try again!”

My mother’s taught her to say “Oh dear, how sad, nevermind” in a dreadful echo of that proud bastion of appallingly offensive sitcoms,  It Ain’t Half Hot, Mum. I pretend I can’t hear it.

But the best bit is how brilliantly her singing is coming along. She brings home another song from nursery or a grandparent every week, and then proceeds to mash them all together and, if we’re not quick enough on the uptake, congratulate herself loudly on her, erm, tunefulness. We’ve been playing Laura Veirs’ lovely Tumble Bee* in the car, and today I sang a bit of one of the songs for her at which point she insisted “we can play music now?” and then, when Prairie Lullaby had finished, added “maybe Because, Because, Because now?”, which was her way of requesting Veirs’ lovely version of Woody Guthrie’s Why Oh Why?

That’s worth an Incy-Wincy-Spider-Goodbye-Song-from-Something-Special-Old-MacDonald mashup any day.

*I gotta admit, I did not see myself liking kiddie folk music. I blame Ash entirely.

by Alexandra Roumbas Goldstein

Reflections on Ramona: 21 months

I actually came on here to blog about food, because I’ve been cooking lots lately and I wanted to share some recipes and stuff, and talk about Great British Chefs (again) because God knows I love talking about it. But instead it feels more natural to write about Ramona right now, so I’m going to go with the blogging flow. And, in fact, start with food.

With talking about food.

With talking about food in her sleep.

With shouting about food she does, or doesn’t want, in her sleep, for a full hour before she properly wakes up. She’s doing that toddler thing a lot at the moment where it’s all “I want this! I want this! Oh, you’re giving it to me? I DON’T WANT IT! EXCEPT I DO!”. And in her sleep, it’s coming out like so:

4am: “Want try some chicken”

5:30am: “No Wee-ta-bix! Noooo Weee-taa-bix! Nooooo Wee-ta-bix!” (repeat until your mind is lost.)

6:30: “No cake! No cake! No cake!” (Pinter pause) “Caaaaake!”

As one family member put it: “she’s half-Greek, half-Jewish. What are the poor girl’s chances?”. It’s true – both clans are never knowingly underfed.

She’s getting more and more independent, and there’s a huge side order of random. She giggles like a loon at everything. I recently bought her Meg Goes to Bed because we practically wore out Meg and Mog and one night she got so hysterical will laughter over the bit where the spaghetti turns out to be worms and slithers away that it took twenty minutes to calm her down enough to sleep. In her cot she was lying on her front crying out “supper wriggled away! SUPPER WRIGGLED AWAY! PLOP PLOP!” and giggling frenetically. Loon.

My worries from last month that I was holding back her physical development went up in smoke when everything she’d refused to do until now suddenly clicked. Stairs are being climbed. Slides are being slid down. She runs up the driveway yelling “‘AMONA WIN THE RACE!”. She babbles on about going “outside, play foot ball with Mummy / Daddy!” (she says it “foot ball” as if it’s two separate words, endearingly). Her version is football is most handball, or a sort of desultory rugby, but that she got Ash to deign to put his foot near a ball is nothing short of a miracle. One day she can take over my efforts to get him to care enough to understand the offside law.

Her speech is going from strength to strength, though she clams up if too much attention is paid; the nursery staff have told us they were constantly underestimating her until we told them what a babbler she is. They realised how much she talked to other kids and tried chatting to her one-to-one more, and I love how they’ve paid close attention to everything we’ve said. She’s into singing in a big way now; no car journey is complete without a rendition of Twinkle Twinkle Yittle ‘Tar. Apparently she loves that particular number so much she sang it to all the kids sitting round the lunch table at nursery.  I welled up when she sang Ten Little Ducks for me because I sang her that over and over when she was very small and it was the only thing that would pacify her as a grumpy, post-colicky tot. Her version is a fraction different:

“Ten little ducks… swim one day… over hill and far away… Mother Duck said ‘quack quack quack’… only three…two…four… three…two ducks came back…”

All of this rosy-spectacled gazing doesn’t take away the fact that she’s now beginning to throw really targetted tantrums, and be deliberately disobedient, and give me those looks that says phenomenally cheeky backchat is just around the corner.

But I know we’ll get through it. And being a bit of a hardass, and telling her off, and not always letting her get her own way – all things I’m already doing – will be worth it to let her find her true potential and be a decent person. She’s getting better about her pleases and thank yous, though there are still lots of reminders needed. And for some reason, after saying ‘yes’ beautifully for months, she keeps saying ‘yeah’ now, which we’re trying to talk her out of.

She’ll always have me wrapped around her little finger to some extent, of course. But she doesn’t have to know it.

by Alexandra Roumbas Goldstein

When is a hat not a hat? When it’s a Hat

Many months ago, Ramona strolled out of daycare holding a fuzzy piece of fuchsia fabric from the odds-and-ends box. It looked a bit like the unfortunate remains of a Muppet that came to a sticky end but the staff said they wouldn’t miss it and she could keep it.

Perhaps because at the time she also happened to have a pink hat, she christened said rag “Hat”. Hat lives in the car, only. He is the first thing she asks for in the car, so when Hat accidentally fell into a puddle and we had to take Hat away to be washed, this caused some comment.

A few days later, Hat was finally returned to Ramona, who was ecstatic. This week, I’ve heard the following about fourteen times:

“Hat clean!”

“Hat had go wash…”

“Hat fall in puddle.”

“Hat in CAR!”

“Hat CLEAN!”

If you need a better reason for using ordinary household bits and bobs as toys, I can’t think of one.

by Alexandra Roumbas Goldstein

Reflections on Ramona: 20 months

So, I’m pretty sure she’s already smarter than me.

Her memory is utterly phenomenal, and her babbling away totally charming. Although most of her speech now consists of three to four word sentences, lacking much in the way of structure, she also came out with “I’m going to eat it all up!” the other morning at breakfast. She can correctly recite about 80% of the alphabet without prompting, count to ten easily (twenty if she’s feeling it) and recognise 4 or 5 letters reliably. I’m just about bursting with pride.

I’ve been mildly worried recently that her motor skills aren’t quite on the same wavelength  – not because I expect her to be able to do more, or am concerned about her future abilities, but because I know I have a tendency to worry about her physical safety and restrict her a bit, and I thought I might be holding her up. And it’s not because she’s a girl, but because we simply don’t have that much safe space (I don’t mind her falling over, but I do mind her getting injured, unsurprisingly). I really started to fret when she started saying “be careful, Mummy! Be careful Daddy!”, as I realised just how often I was, effectively, teaching her to be scared.

But I’ve noticed something about the things she’s resisting doing recently, and that’s that her reluctance doesn’t seem to be motivated by fear.

For example, she won’t climb stairs. Unless, that is, I hold her hands, and she can climb them one step at a time, like an adult. She only deigned to attempt a hands and knees crawl into a playground Wendy house today because another kid did so – eventually though she refused and wanted to have her hand held, so she could step in in one.  A couple of weeks ago it took around 25 attempts, with me progressively supporting her less and less before she would climb up an incline holding onto a handrail instead of me (she flatly refused to go on hands and knees). She’s fascinated by dirt, and lives in a household where we wipe hands only the normal amount, but doesn’t like using her hands to climb or crawl (and as a baby surfed furniture before she crawled and crawled for only three weeks before walking independently).

So… what is it? Is it laziness, motivated by the fact that I all-too-easily give in and help her? I think this is a likely culprit, and am working on that – she knows what ‘try’ means, and she’s hearing it more than ever now. Is it a little bit of perfectionism and frustration, wanting to get straight to the end point without bothering with the intervening stages? My mother says my sister was a bit like that and she still is a hard-working perfectionist, in a good way. Six of one, half a dozen of the other?

It’s really me, and not her, I’m worried about. The world will waste no time placing limitations on her, so God knows I shouldn’t be. I think I owe her the time spent reflecting on and changing my own behaviour if I expect her to keep working on hers.

Speaking of which… ahhh, toddlers. She’s mostly fine and cheery, as long as her need for sleep is observed. But boy does she have a meltdown if she thinks I’m cross with her. She’ll do something naughty, laugh, apologise, and do it again. Typical boundary testing. And then I follow through on the consequences and make a stern face, and… oh boy.  And you can see that the tears are of real distress. Tiredness led to a tense moment at bathtime followed by a tearful bedtime and I made sure she got a solid block of cuddles, kisses and being told how much I love her before going to sleep, just to balance it out.  This child has known nothing but affection and gentleness all her life, but she’s so thrown by anything in our relationship feeling out of sorts. Where does that come from? Either way, I’m never going to scrimp on pouring on the reassurance. She will know, every day of her life. how much her family adores her.

This stage fills me with wonder and scares the crap out of me at the same time. Yet, I feel like I’ve said that at every stage, so I guess as a parent you never really grow out of that, huh?

by Alexandra Roumbas Goldstein

Reflections on Ramona: 19 months

I’m having the opposite of writer’s block: blogger’s overload. It’s when there’s so much to write about fighting for precedence in your head that you stumble into a kind of blogging intertia. Not good. So I’m knocking it on the head by devoting an evening to writing an easy post, with more varied ones to follow.

Anyway, I’m due my regular reflection on a small person who is, quite frankly, rather brilliant.

Ramona’s hit the toddler stage full blast, running around like a loon and talking nineteen to the dozen now. There are lots of exchanges like this:

R: “Driiiiiink… driiiiink…”
Me: “As soon as I get you into your sleeping bag, you can have your drink. You know that.”
R: “Yes, Mummy. I know.”*

And she’s valiantly banging away at full sentences:

R: “Daddy carry ‘mona down’tairs?”
Me: “Yes, darling; he’ll be back in a minute to take you downstairs.”
R: “Daaaaaddyyyy… open the door, carry ‘mona down’tairs now!”

The long and painful bath phobia is now over – in fact, she throws a strop if she thinks she’ll miss her bath, and pointedly stands at the bottom of the stairs announcing “goo’nigh’, bath-time” and clutching Weasel to her chest. She’s becoming more and more dextrous and fearless, although she’s still bewilderingly daunted by stairs and won’t climb more than one before requesting to be picked up (though to be honest that’s something of a relief).

She’s obsessed with reading, as ever, and I’ve managed to nab a couple of audio recordings of us reading together. I really want to grab some video of her amazing reactions to her favourites. Full kicking, squealing, overexcited toddler joy. I’m going to miss that so much and am determined to enjoy every moment, and have them to look back on!

She’s also rather obsessed with the box, and we’re having to make an extra effort to model good behaviour by turning it off. Most of her favourites are positive and educational, from ‘Mi Tubble’ (Something Special) to Peppa Pig, a work of subversive genius that I enjoy watching as much as – possibly more than – she does, but nonetheless we’d like to direct more of her energies to things like painting and drawing, the latter of which she’s recently become quite interested in. (By which I mean scribbling aimlessly, but the crayons have helped her become very reliable with her colours as I hand them to her one by one as she gets the colours right!)

She’s a phenomenally good eater, and a fair sleeper, both of which I’m thoroughly grateful for. And she’s a sociable little soul who has learned the value of a cow-eyed “pleeeeease?” already.

She can be a bit of a drama queen, as I think are most toddlers, so of course the flipside to all this incredible development is throwing massive, often unexpected hissy fits that are quite extraordinary in their volume and extent.

But it’s so easy to forget that when she trundles around the house randomly throwing guerilla hugs at people’s legs while yelling “CUDDLE!”.

I’m so easily pleased.

*Sounds massively precocious, but actually mimicking Chris Haughton‘s brilliant book, A Bit Lost, in which she fills in the part of Squirrel. Other classic Ramonaisms taken from books include yelling “MEEOOOOWW! Poor Mog!” (Meg and Mog) and insisting “‘Iway Bat, ‘Iway Bat… R… R… Rat” because I’ve corrected her so many times (The Highway Rat).