Are we normal?

I need to rant before I explode.

Can someone with a child at least slightly older than 3 years and 2 months please write to me and tell me that it's a crazy age but it does get better. I don't mean someone with a child who had a couple of tantrums aged 2 1/2 but soon grew out of them. You can just get back to your wonderful life with your perfect child, in your no doubt perfectly clean and tidy house and wallow in your own self-smugness, keeping your la-la rose-tinted fairyland opinions to yourself. (I warned you it was a rant.) We don't need to hear from the likes of you, thank you very much. If indeed you do exist. And I very much hope that if you do you are a very rare breed. No, I'm hoping to hear from a vast swathe of almost insane (but not quite) mothers telling me that my children are normal. Or at least as normal as pre-schoolers and babies can ever hope to be.

I had a vague glimmer of hope after catching up with a couple of my mums group friends and being told by one that when her daughter is tired and feral she poos on the garage floor. Then she approaches her mum and says "Guess what, Mummy. I did a poo on the floor." And her mum says, "oh god, you didn't. Where?" and she sniggers and runs off.

See, that's the kind of mum I want to hear from. But preferably one with a slightly older child who has matured beyond this crazy behaviour and can say with reasonable confidence that it was a phase (isn't everything?) but that thankfully it is now over and said child seems quite normal and almost human.

I think everything is magnified for me at the moment as I am doing about 70-80% of the care of our children. Which is normal for most mothers. But I'm not most mothers so let's not dwell. And I'm quite sure there are a few of you out there with more, or crazier, or whatever children reading this and thinking "oh my god, hark at her whinging. She doesn't know how easy she's got it." But hold ye tongue and bear with... all is relative, is it not?

So, here are a few of the things that my gorgeously sweet, cute, clever and funny little Miss Chief drove me insane with today.

• Rubbing glitter from a picture all over the floor then sticking her hand in it so she can spread it around elsewhere.
• Refusing to sleep. Or be quiet.
• Asking for a wipe and when asked why admitted it was to wipe up her own wee from the carpet. But it was "just a little bit".
• Drawing all over the outdoor table in (thankfully washable) felt tip pen. (And at some point when I wasn't looking drawing on our very expensive security screen door.)
• Being overly rough with her brother, including pushing him off a little ride-on toy she was pushing him around on and then telling me he fell. And hitting him with a stick. Yesterday she hit him on the head with a garden broom I'd just bought for her for being good in the supermarket. Why do kids do that? You reward them for being good and they take it as a signal to start being naughty again. I'm really not convinced the whole positive reinforcement method of discipline works.
• Gluing the table instead of the bit of cardboard I instructed her to glue whilst we were making a cardboard Easter bunny. Why can't these things just be fun and induce togetherness like they're supposed to?
• Unraveling a roll of toilet paper onto the floor in order to get the cardboard insert, because I wasn't sure where I'd put the one I'd already found for her, when she was supposed to be picking her pens up off the floor whilst I looked for the original roll, or another already used one. And might I also add there was in fact another used one on the floor right behind where she was standing whilst she unraveled the one currently in use.
• Blowing raspberries, not to be funny but to be defiant.
• Shouting.
• Crying.
• Spitting at the dinner table. Isn't it funny how the mind works? See this was the last straw and she was pulled from the table (after a few warnings, I hasten to add), shoved in the shower and taken immediately to bed. We hardly ever do that so she must have been doing some really naughty things before this to induce such a reaction. But I can't remember what they were. Hence, it has just dawned upon me that I will get no replies from almost insane mothers of formerly-crazy-but-now-nearly-normal children because they probably have very little memory of the crazy period and have in fact now placed themselves in the former category of smug parents of perfect kids who had a couple of tantrums but not much else. Ho hum.
• Dangling her feet over my chair at the dinner table. Doesn't sound like much but it's really annoying especially when your husband is simultaneously kicking cats at you.
• Taking Happy One's toys away from him.
• Waking me up.

I suppose her behaviour hasn't really been that bad. In all honesty I'm so tired I can't even remember what it was that got me so irked. That list really isn't that bad. I must have missed something off. I've certainly had much worse days. Just last week my Facebook status referred to my day being like a sit-com. It was a comedy of errors. I can barely remember it now although the standout moment was Chief not wanting to miss a film she was watching so standing up and weeing on her fold-out sofa. There was so much of it that as I carried the sofa onto the tiles to clean it up I ended up with little puddles of wee all over both the carpet and the tiles.

Today she helped me clean up both her wee and her pen marks. I think what really got to me was that it took me so darn long to do anything. If one of them wasn't getting into something then the other was. Happy One found immense interest in any body of stagnant water he could find in the garden, of which there are a few after all the rain we've had. So hanging the washing out took an age as I had to keep running in the house to wash his hands and then figure out how to disperse of said water. Not to mention the fact that he did about 3 poos (in cloth nappies, people).

But the good things that happened today were awesome. In particular Happy One took his first steps with a walker. We almost missed it. I was making the bunny up at the table with Chief and looked up to see him toddling off through the garden. How cool.

And Chief made up a great song on her piano. We'd been playing a game in the garden where she sold rocks and I bought them for leaves, twigs or pegs. A twig was worth 10 leaves and a peg 10 twigs. The rocks started off at 3 leaves each and ended up at 1 peg each. Which is a bit steep but she did give me a discount. And I noticed the quality and size of the rock was considerably improved. Anyway, she made up a groovy little song about playing with the rocks. Of course I'm so sleep deprived I can't remember it now.

I think I need a new label/tag. I'll call it madness. Or "maternal insanity". Or "extreme memory loss caused by sleep deprivation and constant parenting". Or "ug". I'm off to eat a hot cross bun and watch some mind-numbing crime thriller.

Phoebe, Rearranger of Household Items

Phoebe's been getting into a bit of interior design lately. Aside from decoration with crayons she likes to move things around and see where they look best. Apparently, the bin from her bedroom actually looks better in the AV cabinet:

Theory of Mind

Amelie came around to play today.

We haven't seen her for a few weeks. Last time she visited she zipped around the house using Phoebe's ride-on car as a walker. Lucie followed excitedly exclaiming it was the furthest Amelie had walked. Now it's her favourite thing and she's pretty adept at it although she's yet to take her first solo steps.

Phoebe and Amelie are developing a lovely friendship. At lunch they wave at each other from across the table and end the meal by yelling loudly together. Admittedly today it did seem to be Phoebe doing all of the yelling. She was apparently very excited about having her little friend come to visit.

After lunch they had a play.

Lucie sat Amelie in the ball pool. She wasn't too sure about it. Phoebe loves the ball pool. It's one of those sandpit clams that you can put sand in one half and water in the other. She likes to throw balls from one half to the other then climb into the other side and throw them back. Then she climbs back to the first side and rolls around. Eventually she lays back abd body surfs the balls which end up spilling out and rolling all over the floor.

Phoebe was obviously thrilled to have a friend to play with in the pool and climbed in to join Amelie. But as the balls started to move around Amelie freaked out and started to cry. Phoebe stopped and watched Amelie closely. She seemed acutely aware that her movements in the pool were upsetting her.

Later, Amelie practised her walking with the ride-on car. Again, Phoebe got very excited at the opportunity to share her toys with a friend. How I hope this behaviour continues through toddlerhood. Phoebe grabbed the seat of the ride-on car. I'm not really sure what her intention was. Did she want to sit on the seat whilst Amelie pushed, or was she helping Amelie push it? Either way both children were playing with the same toy and Amelie couldn't get on with the business of walking. Which is a very serious business for a 10 month old. She got very frustrated and the tears came again.

Phoebe stopped what she was doing and hugged Amelie.

It was so cute but it was also evidence that my little baby is developing theory of mind. This is a big milestone in social and pyschological development. Baby girls show empathy as young as 6 months old, when they cry in response to other babies crying. Phoebe's behaviour demonstrated an ability to empathise, and to understand cause and effect. She could see that what she was doing was upsetting Amelie so she stopped. She has also learnt that when she is upset we cuddle her and it makes her feel better and so she hugged Amelie, presumably to help to make her feel better.

From the limited reading I have done, Phoebe seems remarkably young to be developing such skills. I do wonder to what extent her time at daycare has helped her social development. Certainly being in the company of other children and learning how to behave in social situations must be a contributing factor. Some of it is also her personality. She has always been the kind of baby who likes to play with others, in as much as such a young child is capable of playing with others. Unfortunately, the other children generally prefer to play alone and quite often squeal at her when she attempts to play with the same toys.

This is a fascinating period of development and, as Phoebe was a bit fussy a week or two ago, I checked out whether she was in a wonder week. Sure enough, she is just emerging from Wonder Week 55: The World of Programs. I still haven't read the book, although I'd love to. It seems expensive and the local libraries don't have a copy. Previously I have always managed to find a mum who had blogged about it but not this time. There are mentions of it but no one has gone into detail on the skills acquired during this phase. From what I can gather, following the previous period of learning about sequences ("this happens then that happens"), this is more about cause and effect, if-then (speaking my language now), that is, "if this happens then that happens. But if this happens than something else happens". This certainly seems to fit in with the understanding Phoebe was demonstrating yesterday.

She walks!

Phoebe has walked.

I won't go as far as to say that she is walking as she has only taken a few steps on a few occasions.

I really should have held off on this post until I have video evidence, which, incidentally, I have tried to get but Phoebe and cameras don't always mix. In fact getting out a camera is generally a good way to get her to stop doing something. (I must remember that the next time I find her eating the Christmas tree lights.) However, my excitement in telling the world that Phoebe has walked far surpasses my alacrity in getting video evidence. Indeed I am generally so mesmerised by the sight of my little baby actually walking that I forget I even have a camera. Then there's the fact that she doesn't actually do it for very long.

She has taken the odd step before but last night, whilst playing with my friend's eight and ten year old boys, she twice took a series of five steps. The boys were so excited. She has taken a few steps again today but only a couple at a time. Clearly she needs the lads to get her up and running. She's doing a lot of wall-walking though. (I tried to get a video of this too but again wasn't quick enough.)

The wall walking is pretty funny. This involves Phoebe facing the wall and walking sideways like a crab using her hands to guide herself. It's nowhere near as funny as her actual walking in which she looks somewhat like a stoned zombie chasing a kebab. This isn't exactly a new look for her. Here she is in her early Kebab-Chasing Stoned Zombie days. I do hope it isn't a trait.