Reality of Having a Toddler

Indesit now sell toddlers with their tumble driers

I've not really written much about being a mother of a toddler, mostly because it's full of body fluids (usually my son's) and high pitched screams that would upset all animals from miles away. But here I am now writing about them as sometimes it's nice to know what you are in for before the big T-W-O.

I love cloth nappies, but at the age of two suddenly nappies are evil and are no longer allowed to be on bottoms. Laying him down to put the nappy on results in screams and kicks. Now I can survive one or two of these but doing this for every single nappy change and grabbing the nappy and flinging it into my face gets very tiresome. Did I insult him by removing a dirty nappy from his bum? Was it wrong to not allow him to continue to play with the soggy wee-filled nappy? How dare I lay him down and a fresh nappy on him. Oh and the moment a wipe touches his skin he goes wild, infact it's probably a good thing that they don't come in red because then I'd be screwed for sure.

Once upon a time your TV was your box to real world news, soaps, documentaries and all I can say is whoever came up with catch-up TV and on-Demand things like iPlayer and 4OD clearly was a parent who had suffered from 24/7 Cbeebies/Nick Jr/CITV for too long. I mean I love Mr Bloom (he's one tasty gardener) and as a kid I loved Thomas & Friends but there's so much I can take without wanting to blow up the TV by "accident". Right now I've heard the Numberjacks theme song about eight times because my son has found them on the iPad - thanks YouTube. So if you are hoping to have a cup of tea whilst your toddler plays quietly and let you watch your show on TV you really are in for a surprise.

Baths are no longer just for washing your child in. Every time we start the bath our son gets excited and yells "BAF!" over and over and over and it is one of the few times he allows us to remove his clothes without some sort of backlash (usually in the form of screams and tears even if he's soaked in wee or dropped his drink on himself) and the moment he is in the bath he stands very still and... has a wee. Not just a little one, a nice long wee. So now our son is basically getting clean in water that has wee in it. There was a time when the bath was just a bath but at some point it got renamed to "bathilet" or "toith" whichever you prefer.

Wellies are THE fashion item to wear all the time. This isn't a girl only thing, boys will find their wellies, put them on and run around in the house in wellies and a nappy, or in my case just wellies as the nappy has been ripped off. Trouble is we use wellies for going to our allotment and as the weather has be a tad on the wet side (yes I'm joking when I say "a tad" when clearly we've just had the whole of the North Sea dropped onto our country) and what happens when mud dries on wellies? You can imagine how fun it is in our household so I'll not say more.