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.

Funny Moments - Cleaning Mummy

I've given up locking the door behind me when I go to the toilet and figured if my son sees me use a toilet he may learn something. I'm happy to say he has taken an interest in the whole using a toilet business... just not in the way I hoped.

Perhaps trunks will look better?

As a woman I always sit down on the toilet, no matter what I am going to be doing. So I sit myself down and Petit Boy runs in and sees me sitting there with my pants down, that's fine I don't care if he sees me this way as I I don't see why I should hide myself from my own son. He would then watch me pull some toilet paper off the roll and use it, flush and put the lid down. He quickly caught on to what is required for using the toilet and decided to become mummy's toilet helper.

Now when I sit down onto the toilet he smiles like crazy, rips some toilet paper off the roll and then... tries to wipe mummy clean.

Very awkward when it happens, although usually he doesn't get my 'lady bits' and just tries to dry off my thigh or leg for some reason. Either my son thinks I am a messy toilet user (how does a woman get it all over herself when sitting down on a toilet?) or he's just not fully understanding why exactly mummy puts toilet paper down there.

But yeah... AWKWARD!

My Little Camera Addict

This isn't the first time he's done this but since he chatters on this clip I decided to upload it as seeing a tiny baby size nose for 5 seconds is pretty boring (which is what we usually find on our iPad).

New Words

Petit Boy has suddenly gained a vocabulary in a short amount of time. I was beginning to worry as by the age of 2 years old most have a fair few words and my boy was showing no interest in speaking. Here's a few of his words.

Boow = Ball
Shoo = Shoe
Stairsh = Stairs
Da = Mom/Dad/Nan/Gran/Grandpa/Grandad/any family member basically
Tah = Thank you/Please (he says "Tah" when handing over his cup and wants more juice)
La = Light/Lamp/Light Switch
Wowow = Washing Machine (because of the noise it makes when spinning!)
Wow = Wow! (simple, eh?)
Choo = Train (Usually his Thomas the Tank Engine toy)
Shhh! = Shhh! (along with finger to lips, sometimes misses and puts it to his nose)


There's a few words he says that we're not sure what they mean. "Dis" is one of those words he uses often but doesn't seem to be about a certain thing. He also has an understanding of when I ask something from him. Here's an example of what happened on Monday.

Petit Boy: Tah! *hands blue crayon*
Me: Thank you! Can I have another colour crayon, please?
Petit Boy: *puts hand into box of crayons and picks a brown crayon* Tah!
Me: Thank you! Can I have another colour crayon, please?
Petit Boy: *puts hand into box of crayons and picks a red crayon* Tah!
Me: Thank you! Can I have a kiss?
Petit Boy: *puts lips up to mummy's lips*
Me: Thank you, I love you too.

I asked twice because I wanted to be sure it wasn't a one off, but he seemed to understand what I asked and it was brilliant! He doesn't always give me a kiss, but he's a boy so him shaking his head with a cheeky grin on his face is just as sweet and cheeky as him giving me a big kiss.

Toddlers & Tantrums

My first Audioboo blog post! Expect more in the future.

Small Steps

Sorry I have been so quiet but I thought I'd show you a short video to explain what's been happening to the Petit Household.

Moved everything around so we can now see outside from one of our balcony doors and Alex loves to stand infront of it and watch all the cars and buses go by. It also is a lot better for him to crawl and walk around now. I know in the video it looks a mess but that's always the case when a little one is awake... toys will be EVERYWHERE until they go to bed - even then we always end up finding a run-away Mega Blok somewhere.

I guess I should start looking at reins soon as I want him to be able to walk outside with me without the fear of him rushing off into a busy road, he's more confident walking on his own then he is being held one handed by us.

When is Your Baby No Longer a Baby?

Just 5 hours old.

I had pondered for a while as to when you start to call your baby a 'Toddler' rather than 'Baby' and ignored this simply because everyone else calls my son a baby. But today it hit me in the face hard and actually made me rather sad.

When is your baby no longer a baby? When you realise all the clothes in the baby section of the store are too small and you are now having to look into the girls/boys clothes section.

I was out buying some new clothes for my boy today as he has out grown a lot of his stuff and the weather has finally become more summer-like. I found myself in the little boy's section of Asda Living buying shorts for the first time. Tesco was no different, I wandered around the baby clothes but it dawned on me... he was not a baby anymore.

13 months old and reorganising his clothes.

Of course he will always be our little boy, whether he's crawling around going "baba" or when he's six foot tall and moving into his own pad.

So when did you realise your child was no longer a baby? Do you think 'Toddler' is when they start to crawl or walk or something else?