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When toddlers attack! 2007-09-18 17:50:50 Little Miss had a play date today with one of her little toddler friends, and it almost ended in tears. We have all heard the horror stories, the toddler that lashes out, punches, pinches, bites and scratches, well Little Miss’ best friend is one of those.
To be honest she is pretty good around Little Miss generally, even sharing her toys on occasion. Hell she even announces her love for Little Miss when they meet with a big hug and a ‘,I love you, you are my bestest friend’, it’s all very cute and adorable really. But this is the same toddler who at childcare is known to lash out at the other kids.
And today for once she lashed out at my adorable Little Miss - nothing too serious, just a swipe really. But I must say it took all my self-control to refrain from my initial impulse. I have never really been there before when another toddler has done anything to my girl and my initial reaction was to jump to her defence, protect her, and in doing so destroy her adve Read more:attack
Stay in there and don’t come out until after your rest. 2007-09-17 09:17:52 Little Miss - fast becoming known around the house as the toddler from here - has learned a new and exciting game. This game involves her shutting us in a room, shutting the door on us, and as she does it declaring ‘Now you stay in there until after your rest - Bye’. This is a game I ‘enjoyed’ playing for most of the weekend.
Actually it wasn’t too bad all things considered as I got to sit in the bathroom (which is apparently my room) with a cup of coffee and a magazine, balanced on the edge of the bath while I played the game. Every 5 minutes she would return to the bathroom, tell me I should now eat my ’special cake’, which I would duly pretend to eat, then the door was shut on me again with the clear message to stay there for my rest. So it was a fairly relaxing way to spend Saturday afternoon.
Wife may of course may have a slightly differing view of this game, because for her it took on a slightly more urgent edge.
This is because according
oh dear dead dear 2007-09-15 08:18:19 Little miss has taken to announcing her concern at certain matters with a refrain of ‘oh dear dear dear’.For example the other day I opened the door to the bedroom of the supposedly soundly sleeping toddler only to find her standing there on the little couch in her room, a toy hanger full of stuffed toys ripped from the ceiling and toys strewn all around. When she heard the door open Little Miss turned to me with a look of concern and uttered the sentence ‘Oh dear dear dear, I was just getting my toys and they fell down, Oh dear dear dear, whatever shall we do? Daddy, you will have to fix it’ - all in a strangely plummy English accent. The fact she was meant to be in bed seemed irrelevant, the fact she was standing on her couch was inconsequential, the unfortunate reality that the hook in the room could not absorb the strain from her swinging on it was neither hear nor there. In her mind the ’system’ had failed her, and let her down quite badly, it h
How to tell you spend too much time working at home 2007-09-12 21:31:23 Had a bit of a wake up call about the amount of time I have spent doing work at home from Little Miss, the currently world leader in toddler tantrum having. I came out of the lounge room to find her sitting in my big leather chair happily bashing the keys on the desktop computer and then spinning the chair around to face the lap top and tapping away on that keyboard as well.There she sat spinning back and forth between the two happily bashing the keys only stopping momentarily to pick up my mobile and do a pretty good impersonation of me when I am on the phone.It was cute as buggery and it made me smile …………………. until when I told her it was bath time and she had to get down she did another very good impression of me saying ‘in a minute I just have to send this email’ followed by a tantrum when I went to get her down. Ouch, it hurts at times when the ones you love so much hold a mirror up to you so you can see your failings, e Read more:working
Daddee Yah! 2007-09-12 07:59:56 Ok, this is a shameless plug for another fathers blog on the net - Daddy Yah!. Never done a plug before, but I enjoy the site so I thought I would point others in the right direction.It’s a nice clean blog including some common sense tips from a father who obviously adores his kids - and judging from what I have read about them rightly so. I for one plan to spend the next few years comparing the ups and downs of parenting with the author and hope continues to post for a long time.I have just reached a decision, I think I will post about one site a week that I find useful or just enjoy. So if you have a blog or a baby / toddler / child related site let me know and I’ll pass it on. Let’s face it we are all in this together so we may as well try and help each other out a little.
A language all her own 2007-09-11 09:04:16 Little Miss has started inventing words to describe things in her world that she doesn’t yet have a proper word yet. I don’t mean nonsensical sounds like babies make, but full blown words.Perhaps the best example is the way she describes a CD she has that skips a little (toddler finger prints are not good for CDs). She has decided that her ‘cd is lumpty’. Which I think is actually a perfect way to describe what it is. Sure it’s a knew word and it took us a while to work out what it meant, but I have decided to slip it into my everyday usage in her honor. I wonder if I can use it in tomorrows meetings?
Technorati Tags: toddler, daddy, language
Sad but true 2007-09-10 07:53:45 I came across this article by some fluke - which means it probably just popped into my RSS reader or something, and while I realised it was sad, it was also very true. It is an article about how men these days fear being around kids.Not because kids are scary and hard to deal with, but because of the fear that if you spend time around kids you worry what people are thinking about you.Now as people who read this blog would realise I have two kids of my own, and I love nothing more than spending time with them, it is the reason I get up in the mornings these days. But I, like a lot of fathers I know, can be very self conscious when doing parental duties, not around family and friends but around the general populace.The one time I am always nervous is when I take Little Miss into the parents room to change her, or to a play ground to have some fun. It’s not her I am concerned being around, she is the one person who adores me unquestioningly, but it is the other parents, or general o
Weekend Dad 2007-09-09 10:09:50 Wife used to laughingly (well a sinister kind of evil laugh, half joking and yet still filled with resentment) refer to me as ‘Weekend
Dad’. Not because we had separated or divorced or anything as colorful as that, just because about the only time I saw Little Miss in the first couple of years would be over the weekend.This was caused by a combination of a huge commute of almost 4 hours in total each day when I was in town, combined with a job that would see me interstate for about one week in every 3 on average. So even if I was around, I was up before Little Miss and home well after bedtime.In recent months I have set about trying to rectify this - doing things like rather than staying over night in the nations capital when there for a meeting I would leave home at 5:00am drive for 3 hours, finish up around 7:00pm and drive home for 3 hours. These days were always filled with back to back meetings starting at 8:30am and running until I left at around 7:00pm. They were pai
Instantly slimming toddler 2007-09-07 08:03:11 I went to pick up my daughter after child care today only to notice that she seemed to be slimmer than when I dropped her off. At first I was little concerned because it wasn’t instantly obvious to me in what way she had changed. It was the same feeling of unease, I get when Wife comes home with a new haircut - I know there is something askew, I just know that something isn’t right, but for the life of me, I can’t work out what it is. This leaves me in the invidious position of wanting to ask what has changed, but knowing that one of the following is about to occur:1. I take a tentative stab and guess what has changed only to discover that nothing has changed, so I am accused of not paying any attention, otherwise I would know nothing has changed.2. I pick the wrong change, mention the new haircut when it is new shoes, or new shoes when my wife has gone from a blond to a redhead - I just inevitably get it backwards.3. I say nothing in the hope that it is just paranoia Read more:toddler
Fathers day - or more aptly entitled ‘Sunday’ 2007-09-04 07:54:12 Well Sunday
was Fathers
day, or as I like to call it Sunday. I wasn’t expecting much, and I wasn’t disappointed. My wife tried to explain the new concept of Fathers Day to Little Miss and made sure that there was a lovely card (the Wiggles make Fathers Day cards now by the way). Also there was a great hand made little box with a picture of Little Miss on it that she made at day care. Well she splashed some purple paint on it and one of the carers stuck her picture on the top. I am not sure what to do with it, but I do know it will take pride of place somewhere.The best thing about the box apart from the obvious love it was completed with was the unsmiling photo of my daughter on the top. It was one taken at daycare, and it is the most surly contemptuous look that I genuinely think I will ever see cross her face this side of the teenage years.The one thing though that was quite obvious was just how bored with the idea of Fathers Day Little Miss quickly became, once she reali
Honesty is not always the best policy 2007-09-27 07:37:27 One of the most adorable and endearing things about toddlers is their complete honesty, the lack of pretense, the way they are lost in the moment.
Of course as with anything that is extremely adorable and cute it can be a double edged sword and can cut you to the core. Luckily for me I was the recipient of one such an episode.
The other night Wife was sitting in the loungeroom with Little Miss and Usurper drying the toddlers hair after a shower. I was in the kitchen doing the husbandly duty of unpacking the clean stuff from the dishwasher and dealing with the dinners detritus. It was then that I overheard the following exchange:
Wife: ‘Come here sweety and we’ll dry your hair.’
Little Miss: ‘I have lots and lots of hair!’
Wife: ‘Yes you do, what about mummy?’
Little Miss: ‘Lots of hair!’
Wife: ‘How about Usurper?’
Little Miss: ‘Usurper has a little hair’
Wife: ‘And Daddy?’
There was a very long pa Read more:always
, Honesty
Don’t screw up the kid 2007-09-24 21:03:23 Do you ever get the feeling that one of your main roles as a parent is to just try and not completely screw up your kids?
More and more I am coming to the reluctant conclusion that this is a major part of being a parent. Sure you have to teach them the skills needed to get through ordinary life (and hopefully some Mad Skillz at that), but that is only part of it. You also have to NOT teach them bad habits or damage their tender little psyches.
I don’t want to raise the next John Wayne Gacy, or Lindsay Lohan, or John Bourke (who nobody will know because he is a social misfit and spends most of his time locked in his house - presumably screwed up by his parents). You see when I look at Usurper, the 3 month old baby, I see nothing but perfection. A clean and innocent slate with not a mean bone in her body and winning smile that could melt your heart - even if the grin is caused by gas.
Then there is Little Miss - the toddler - and I can already see where she has started to develop a
Are you thinking what I’m thinking B2? 2007-09-23 19:41:44 It would appear in our toddlers fantasy world that I have been assigned the non de plume of B2. That’s right, even in a fantasy world, I have been relegated to ’second banana’ in the Banana’s in Pyjamas dichotomy. You see she has started making up little fantasy games in which we are the two Banana’s from Banana’s in Pyjamas fame.
This ‘game’ consists of Little Miss rabbiting on in what appears to me to be nonsensical gibberish, but which I assume is her attempts at repeating large swathes of dialogue from the story cd’s she has, before she turns to me and states ‘Are you thinking
what I’m thinking B2?’
The only response to this that doesn’t lead to a major hissy fit is my reply of ‘,I think I am thinking what you’re thinking B1′.
Once the appropriate call and response part of the game is done Little Miss rushes off for a few minutes before returning to wherever I am and starting all over ag
It’s show time 2007-09-22 09:03:08 Today it happened, one of those milestones I have been dreading as a parent, Little Miss put on her fairy dress and demanded we sit and watch as she put on a ’show’.
I have to be honest and say that for someone so insistent that we watch her show, it turned out to be quite a lacklustre performance, completely lacking in either pathos or production values.
The entire ’show’ consisted of watching a toddler dance around in a circle while beating out some kind of rhythm on a drum. The climax of which was reached when Little Miss threw her drum in the air and stood there arms raised to the heavens in triumph while awaiting for the enthusiastic and well deserved applause!
As I sat there I got a brief glimpse of my future which will consist of sitting through numerous performances both in the home and god forbid, in public. I will not only have to pretend that my enthusiasm for my own child’s talent is undeniable, but I will also have to pretend to care abo
Usurper - I hardly know thee 2007-09-21 08:52:33 I have looked back over the posts in this blog and apart from being struck by just how appalling my typing and grammar is at times one other thing has struck me, and that is how focused the entries have been on Little Miss the toddler and not Usurper the baby. This ot me thinking about the amount of time I have spent not only writing about Usurper but actually with Usurper.Maybe it is the curse of the second child that they don’t get as much quality time as the first, or maybe I am just a bad Daddy. I will admit to being worried at times that I am not bonding with Usurper as much or as easily as I did with Little Miss, and also some concern that I never will.Then when I cast my mind further back I start to realise that it wasn’t until Little Miss was truly able to interact, towards the 8-9 month mark, that we really started to bond. Until then I carried her around at times, changed nappies, tried to get to sleep, and I certainly loved her from the beginning as I do Usurper, Read more:hardly know
Boy or Girl 2007-09-19 23:41:20 As you may well be aware if you have been reading this blog for a while I am the proud father of the two most wonderful girls in the world (as every father thinks), namely Little Miss (toddler) and Usurper (10 weeks or so). And as I have said I wouldn’t trade them for the world.
But at lunchtime as I wandered around the city to have a bit of a break I came across a toy store. Being a big kid at heart I couldn’t resist heading in for a look and a little play. Now I will admit that when I was having a play with some of the really cool toys that I had a moment where I also kind of wanted a boy, so that I could buy all this stuff on the pretense of it being for him when it was really for me.
I know that is sexist of me, and I am sure I will be told that, but my daughter loves everything that is pink and purple, loves her fairy dress, her dolls and shows little interest in the trucks and cars I have bought for her.
Oh well, at least she is showing an interest in the PS3 and Wii
I wanna be good girl 2007-10-03 08:29:17 I am not a big fan of labeling kids, or people in general for that matter, if for no other reason than they never really fit - especially when it comes to something like good and evil.
But like pretty much every parent through the annals of time I have been guilty of telling our toddler that she is being naughty, and that she should be a ‘good girl’. What I probably should say is that it is naughty behaviour, or good behaviour - not that she as a person is either naughty or good. But who am I kidding, when she is deliberately throwing the delicious food from her plate onto the floor and giving her impish grin semantics just go right out the door and you just go with whatever pops out of your mouth.
Which is a very long winded introduction to Little Miss’ new trick. See she has cottoned on to the fact that it is better to be a ‘good girl’ than a ‘naughty girl’. This you would genuinely assume would be a good thing, but not with our toddler, now Read more:wanna
swearing toddlers - embarrassing and cute 2007-10-02 05:34:04 I haven’t posted for a few days, because I took some of my own advice and over the long weekend here in the antipodes I spent more time with the kids than with the laptop.
So this post is simply the highlights of the last few days distilled into quotes from the toddler Little Miss and others.
What I originally thought was going to be the highlight of the weekend happened on Friday night during the ritualistic tucking in of Little Miss in her bed. She looked up at Wife and stated, “I love you sooooo much mummy”, to which you could almost see the tears well up in Wifes eyes, and then without a beat Little Miss added, “you have lots of wrinkles.” Talk about shattered you could almost see the tears of joy changing to tears of anguish. That’ll teach Wife for laughing at Little Miss pointing out I was going bald.
Saturday provided another little Gem when we went to the local shopping centre to see wandering around shaking willing hands and doing litt
Lollipops is for big kids too 2007-10-13 07:58:38 We took the toddler Little Miss to Lollipops Playland today - and it was an absolute blast.
I find one of the best thins about having kids is that they definitely provide you an excuse to stop being an adult and start being a toddler yourself at times as well. With Little Miss yelling words of encouragement, waving her arms around and screaming out ‘Come on Dad!’ I found myself doing all kinds of things that normally you are frowned upon as an adult for doing.
I jumped on the bouncing castle, went on numerous slides, rode the tea cups, push along cars and even frolicking in the ball pit of death with the other toddlers (and the odd parent) - and it was the best way to spend a Saturday morning that I can think of.
Sure I ended the day pretty exhausted after climbing up and down all the equipment, my bum hurt from going down slides not built for the expanded rear end of middle age, and my ears are still ringing from all the screaming (and the less said about the nausea from t
Now pa is here too 2007-10-12 10:33:53 Well nanny arrived a couple of days ago, much to the joy of Little Miss, and now Pa has arrived. This of course means that our toddler is starting to play parents off against grand parents. She has already worked out exactly how to con them into giving her exactly what she wants.
It is amazing how after being told ‘no’ to something, she then goes up to a grand parent and asks the exact same question while batting her eyelips and putting on an extra cute voice.
Hell, sometimes she even does it when we are still right there - right in front of us as if we didn’t exist!!
To their credit though so far teh grandparents have backed us up and haven’t given in to any of the demands. Tomorrow though may be interesting, off to a playcentre and then shopping - let the games begin
The Nanny is coming 2007-10-08 08:30:13 Tomorrow is a very exciting day for all in the household - with the exception of yours truly.
You see tomorrow marks the impending arrival of Nanny
- otherwise known as my mum. She is coming to stay with us for a couple of weeks - as she does every few months. Now don’t get me wrong, it isn’t that my mum and me don’t get along, quite the opposite, it is more a case of whenever she is around the number of females in my life telling me what to do rises to an almost unacceptable level.
I am used to Wife telling me what to do. Actually not only what to do, but when to do it, how to do it, and then telling me exactly how what it did was wrong and why.
Over the last couple of years I have even adjusted to Little Miss, the bossiest toddler in the whole land, telling me what to do. Which is generally followed by cries of ‘Daddy do wrong thing’, no matter how closely I follow her detailed instructions.
Even Usurper has gotten into the act - the minute Wife leaves t
When did dizzy stop being fun? 2007-10-07 08:15:51 I spent the morning at the park this morning with Little Miss, Wife and Usurper. Well Usurper just kind of lay there in her pram and didn’t really get into the park. Sure she may only be a few months old, but I am beginning to suspect she is a bit of a lazy baby.
Wife has this thing about not leaving the baby unattended, which rendered her completely useless at the park. And to be completely honest she isn’t much of a run around and climb all over things kind of person - she is far more cerebral than physical (and yet surprisingly it is her that is the athletic six footer whereas I am a dumpy short ass - life is cruel).
So once again I was the one left to entertain the toddler on the play equipment. I went down slides, up stairs, across ramps, slid down poles and was the safety net for Little Miss on whatever activity she wanted to participate in. All of which was great and wonderful and joyous blah blah blah, but I have discovered my kryptonite!
You see this morning they h
Toddler Nightmares 2007-10-06 09:36:49 Little Miss has started having what I can only assume are nightmares most nights. At least once or twice a night there are sobs or even little screams coming from her room, which of course leads to me racing in, prepared to take on whatever demon has entered her room, only to find she is still asleep.
She is thrashing around in her bed, kicking at the blankets, but she is definitely still asleep as her eyes are shut and she is non-responsive when you speak to her. I have got to be honest and admit the first couple of times it freaked me out a little.
Now I just sit with her and rub her back a little until she is calm again, which is usually in about 30 seconds - it is a long 30 seconds though, especially when she also wakes up Usurper and we then have a crying baby and a crying toddler.
She has also started insisting on not having her door shut at night - which is fine with Wife and me, except that it means that she sometimes stays up a little late. Like last night when I wandered past Read more:Nightmares
Overheard toddler conversation 2007-10-04 07:45:58 I overheard this conversation between Wife and Little Miss this evening after bathtime:
Wife: Are you going to wear undies at Carinya (child care centre) tomorrow?
Little Miss:
Yeah. Kimmy will help me (Kimmy is one of the carers)
Wife: Would you like to start wearing undies at
home on the weekend?
Little Miss: No
Wife: But you’re a big girl now
and you know how to use the toilet
Little Miss: When nanny comes.
Wife (to me as she entered the kitchen): HURRY
UP NANNY!!!!! I am sick to death of changing more toddler
nappies
than baby ones!!
This is one thing mistake we have learned with the eldest that we won’t repeat with Usurper - Toilet training should be done when they first show and interest and not put off until it is convenient for the parents.
I will admit to being proud though that my daughter has started to negotiate about various things - takes after me on that front
Technorati Tags: toddler, daddy. wife. ptty
Lots and lots of sticky tape 2007-10-19 01:10:27 Toddlers really do have a special way of putting life into perspective don’t they?
Yesterday a fairly large tree branch fell onto the roof on the in-laws car while they were parked next to our house. It is one of the joys of living in a national park that at times nature decides to lash out and try and take back what is essentially it’s on.
The car was pretty well buggered, the roof caved in and the windows shattered. From all accounts the adults there were all very upset, one in tears at the destruction of their new car (it only tends to happen to new cars) the others a bit stressed by it. Wife of course went straight into ‘What if Little Miss had of been standing under it’ etc - a valid point, but given she wasn’t I personally think you should be grateful and not worry about the ‘what if’ factor.
Of course as they all rushed out to have a look and try and wind back time using mind power Little Miss stood there taking in the destruction and en
But Why? 2007-10-16 08:17:39 It is a moment I have been dreading for quite some time now - the time when Little Miss starts asking the obvious pertinent question that will eventually drive both Wife and I insane, ‘Why?’.
Not just once or twice, not just in context, but repeatedly and incessantly. The answer to any question is currently being met with a further question leading to conversations that both don’t end and go no where. It is like torture, slow, constant, never ending, mind numbing, psychological torture.
I know I am prone to exaggeration, but I genuinely believe I am going to have a complete and utter breakdown over this. One day Wife will come in to find me rocking back and forth in the corner mumbling non sequitors as a toddler stands beside me going ‘Why?’, ‘why?’, ‘why?’ in response to my every utterance.
I don’t mind the question itself, it shows a healthy curiosity when it comes to the world around Little Miss, it is just the relen
Who needs an alarm clock 2007-10-23 20:38:57 We have entered that glorious time with our baby ‘Usurper’ where you don’t need an alarm
clock to wake you because the minute the sun is up it is a signal to her to great the day as well. This isn’t so bad in winter, but as we in the antipodes enter into summer and the sun shows itself at around 5:30am it is a bit of a pain in the ass.
Oh well, I guess it is really only about half an hours sleep that I am missing out on.
So the alarm clock is now rendered useless and just sits there neglected having been set the night before ‘just in case’ it never gets to fulfill it’s purpose in life and actually go off. It must be getting fairly frustrating for that piece of technology constantly suffering from alarmus interruptus or something like that.
Now the early morning awakenings are one thing, but all together more disturbing is how Usurper chooses to wake us. It’s not the cute and glorious little coos and ahhhs that our toddler Little Miss use
Fat parent = paranoid parent 2007-10-21 09:26:29 I will admit to being overweight almost my entire life, and ending up at the morbid obesity stage when Little Miss was born. I finally peaked at about 126kgs (280lbs) when Wife peed on a stick to confirm the impending arrival of Usurper. Since then I am down to around 74kgs (165lbs) as I sit here typing today - much happier and healthier now.
The reason I raise this is I am pretty sure it is going to affect me as a parent. I know I am extra paranoid
about Little Miss and her weight. She is by no means a petite toddler, although she is also pretty tall for her age, but there is no denying she is also pretty solid. So I find myself torn between my fears about her weight and not wanting to deny her some of the simple pleasures in life - like the odd ice cream or donut.
I also don’t want to pass inflict on her any undue psychological issues about her weight. So I have settled on the middle road of making sure that the treats are just that - treats. Where possible she eats very healt
The big day arrives 2007-10-28 09:12:44 After months of anticipation - mainly on my behalf - we are off to see the Banana’s in Pyjamas and Postman Pat in concert tomorrow. I am pretty excited about it all, and not just because I have the day off work!
It is going to be a busy schedule over the next couple of months, we have a Wiggles concert, we have a Hi-5 concert, we have a Christmas extravaganza or two to attend. Each promises to be bigger and better that the previous one with a toddlers running everywhere and Little Miss spinning around and around.
Little Miss has already picked out her dress for tomorrow - a lovely new Dora the Explorer one, so all is in readiness. Of course we won’t leave on time which will mean that there will be tension in the car (who has a children’s concert at 9:30am anyway?) as we rush to get there. Of course I have a 9:00am phone hook up which I will be taking on the mobile while driving (hands free of course), and we are meant to be meeting the in-laws at the door. Damn, now I
Really getting into a story 2007-10-27 09:28:42 I may have mentioned before that I am a completely crap reader of stories as far as a listening audience is concerned. I could never read out loud in class (especially after mispronouncing the word organism as orgasm - it did get a laugh though), and now I struggle to read to our toddler Little Miss.
It is not that I am borderline illiterate, although if you read what I write you could be forgiven for thinking this, it is just that my reading voice tends to be a monotone. It is completely lacking in inflection or expressiveness of any kind. Wife has unkindly suggested that this is an accurate reflection of my emotional state, and a lack of connection to my inner child. Personally I think it is more to do with a complete lack of artistic bent of any kind, in any of the arts, and reading out loud is really just an extension of acting - which I would not even attempt.
But this is quite a long digression from my point, even for me. The other night I was reading to Little Miss one of her cu Read more:story
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