Making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.

Wednesday 23 February 2011

Big girls don't cry...

So in a vain (possibly...no actually probably lame) attempt to psychologically prepare Emily for potty training and the transition from baby girl to big girl I have been slowly introducing her to various activities that I class as "Big girls...... (fill in the blank)"


So pull-up pants have become "Big girls pants", very similar to mummy's pants in that they go up and down and have an elasticated waist, not in the sense that they are nappy lined. I know I turned thirty last week but I am not quite in need of incontinence pants or adult nappies just yet!

We have also removed the lid from her Tommy Tippee cup, so she is learning to sip her juice. Invariable this comes with it's own set of difficulties, there is the chance of choking on the intake of too much juice. The fact that she has taken to coughing just before she takes a sip, therefore meaning she is more likely to inhale the juice rather than ingest it.  Also she does get rather over zealous at times and we end up with a certain amount of sloshing and splashing. However after pouring juice all over herself on several occasions she has started to comprehend the importance of slow, steady drinking and using both hands to hold her cup. Although even big girls still spill from time to time! Hot coffee on my new carpet...opps!


However the biggest and most important step in our journey has been the removal of her cot sides, the transformation from cot to bed. Allowing my daughter the opportunity to escape at will. We are on night three and so far we have only been disturbed once each night, which I think isn't bad going, considering some of the stories I have heard. I am yet to experience the sensation of being smacked in the head with an aftershave bottle in the early hours of the morning or find that my daughter has redecorated her bedroom with sudocrem and baby wipes. 

Although she has taken to crying as a form of verbalising her dismay at being left alone, inconsolable, heart-wrenching sobs only normally reserved for when she has seriously hurt herself, my daughter is obviously learning the art of manipulation. However timing, it would seem, is everything. She will wait until we have tucked her into bed, where she must now have both Bob (the cross dressing teddy) and her "book mama"...an old copy of Noddy, that of course she cannot actually read. So we tuck her and Bob and the book into bed, we turn down the light, say "night, night" about a hundred, thousand times, leave the room, close the door, wrestle with the ridiculously awkward safety gate that won't shut properly unless you jiggle it about in a certain way...the gate that I actually believe may be quite lethal if left in the wrong 'open' position, observing it nearly taking my daughter's eye out the other day. So you turn to begin your descent down the stairs and there it is...that moment right there, that is the precise moment that my daughter chooses to cry! *sigh*

So the next lesson I absolutely must teach my daughter, and very, very soon, is that "big girls don't cry..."

Well actually that's not strictly true is it? Big girls do cry too, especially when they have horrible, ghastly, ridiculously painful tooth ache!!! Grrr... please someone, quick, hit me over the head with an aftershave bottle and put me out of my misery...

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