Happy Feet

No doubt I've previously mentioned my child's obsession with all things penguin related (you'd hope so, given the title of this blog!).

In the latest penguin related identity crisis, and almost directly quoting Happy Feet aka The Reason My Child Thinks She Is A Penguin, all week all I've heard is

"What's up with her feet and the way she is walking?"

Miss V has decided to walk like a penguin.  As in, take a look at how penguins waddle and how they hold their flippers next to their body, and that is what my two year old now walks like.

But it doesn't stop there.

She's also turned herself into a one toddler version of the cast of STOMP! with Happy Feet to the extreme.  And when I say extreme, I mean extreme.  Any surface is acceptable to tap dance on, including the wall next to her cot while she lies on her back (and while I'm in the bath of course).  We tap dance when we're happy, we tap dance when we're bored, we tap dance when we're annoyed, we tap dance just because we can.

I'd like to impose a Happy Feet ban, but I just don't have the heart to do so.

And hey, it's better than her belting out a touching rendition of a medley of Jesus Christ Superstar songs at the top of her lungs at 2am, while getting super passionate about 'people who are hungry, people who are starving' mattering more than Jesus's "pepe" (feet) and head (see the lyrics to Everything's Alright to 'get' that reference).

But oh for a normal life sometimes...

Cookie Bathroom Checkers

The other day I stupidly left a batch of cookies to cool on the table, and promptly forgot about them.  Miss V spotted them, obviously, so I gave her one and neglected to remember that she is now tall enough to reach the table on her own.

At some stage she decided she wanted to taste all of the cookies, and as I've mentioned before she has some serious lightning fast magpie tendencies.  If my back is turned for a minute, she has the ability to grab something and stash it where she wants it.

The cookies vanished, and silly me assumed she ate them.  Oh how wrong I was...

That night when I went to have a bath I walked into the bathroom and was faced with one of the strangest things I've ever seen.  I should also point out that I take major issue with ants in my house, so in my haste to prevent that I didn't bother to take a photo first...

In the middle of each tile in the bathroom floor was a half eaten cookie.  I'm still unclear as to why she decided to play a game of cookie bathroom checkers, or why she only wanted to eat half of every cookie she used.

In fact, as I'm sitting here writing about it the only thing I can think (still) is "WTF?!?!"

How to effectively sing showtunes...

Miss V. is moderately obsessed with showtunes.  When she was younger, the only thing would settle her was songs from the show Glee.  For 20 hours a day it's all we listened to, and it drove me insane.  For it, it spawned what I think may be a lifelong obsession.

Last night while she was in the bath, she wanted to listen to music, including the Glee version of 'Anything Goes'.  This is nothing out of the ordinary, but last night she decided to take the song to a whole new level of dramatic.  The attached photo is almost exactly how she apparently must now sing the song; arms outstretched, head thrown back and holding her high notes at the top of her lungs.

It was seriously one of the funniest things I've ever seen in my life!

My Penguin has Mondayitis

For reasons which are completely unknown to me, my daughter absolutely hates Mondays.  She always has, and I suspect she always will.  Mondays for us go one of two ways:

1. She spends the day laying in bed like a princess, demanding I be her personal food and beverage service to prevent her being "dis-peesed" (displeased) with me.  Once she's stopped being a diva, she usually has a huge nap, wakes up for dinner and then goes back to sleep.  These lazy Mondays are pretty awesome.

2. She becomes a complete antichrist.  These Mondays are not so awesome.  Everything pisses her off, no food will satisfy her gourmet tastes, and I gain approximately 15 new grey hairs every single Monday.

Today, luckily, is the former.  Which gives me a chance to catch up on work, bake her penguin highness some cookies and schedule some blog posts.

It's actually kind of a shame... because I'm having a bit of a lazy Monday myself and would love to go have a nap as well!

French perfumed bubble baths and purple gumboots

Nothing beats getting into a nice, perfumed bubble bath after an emotionally exhausting day, laying back and then hearing

THUMP. Pitter-patter pitter-patter pitter-patter pitter-patter...

"HI MY BUBBA!"

Splash.

The thump would be Miss V. jumping out of bed.  The pitter-patter would be her running into the bathroom from the bedroom, greeting me and then throwing her purple gumboots into my bath before she starts stripping off so she can join me.

After all, what's a nice relaxing bath without a toddler to splash water in your face, dump approximately 60 toy boats into the tub with us and sing at the top of her lungs?

But you know what?  After the day I've had, it was exactly what I needed.

The Hummus Drama

Most days I am the first to say I have one of the most chilled out toddlers in the world.

Today is not one of those days.

I don’t know if it’s residual tiredness from the four day extravaganza that was her second birthday over the weekend, the full moon or what... but Miss V has been getting her antichrist on over the past 24 hours.

Yesterday, despite not being toilet trained and apparently having no desire to be toilet trained, she refused to wear a nappy.  This obviously did not end well.  After the third time she took her nappy off and wet her cot I ended up putting it on backwards so she couldn’t reach the snaps.

And then she decided she didn’t want to be in her cot.  Her short little legs are not long enough to climb over the edge of the cot, so Miss V decided to solve this issue by breaking her cot, kicking the side of it until the bottom came off the runners (and snapped one in the process).  Houdini style she managed to wiggle her way out of the gap and proudly declare that she got out all on her own.

And then there was today...

Miss V has some serious magpie like tendencies.  If my attention is diverted for even a second, she’ll grab something and hide it somewhere.  Today she hid a tub of hummus in the bedroom.  I put her down for a nap, thought that all was fine and when I checked on her she was asleep.  Washed a load of nappies and then went to check on her again.

Somehow she managed to open the hummus, get back into her cot and proceeded to eat three quarters of the tub using a hairclip to scoop it up with.

Hummus. Everywhere.

The garnish on the hummus cake was that when I went to grab her clothes after her shower, she got away from me, ran into the family room and proceeded to pee all over the floor.

This was not what I signed up for with this motherhood gig...

Granny Knickers

Knickers, undies, panties; call them what you want, but the fact is I am horrified at my latest underwear purchases.  Last night I went shopping (at K-Mart, no less!) and decided I would purchase some new underwear and bras.

The dilemma started over the weekend when I realised that all my underwear now falls down my butt, and after trying on my first normal, underwire bra after two years of wearing nursing bras and having a right little tanty at how uncomfortable it was I decided I needed to buy some new ones.

I'm embarrassed to admit how excited I was when I discovered underwire free, seamless bras almost identical to the nursing ones I've been wearing. What's worse is that they came in multi-packs and I got three packs of them.

And then there was the underwear... I walked right past all of the popular, pretty ones, scoffed at the mere idea of g-strings, and found myself frowning at the boyleg section; which I previously have loved.  But no, now the fabrics are "crap" apparently.  I then stumbled upon multi-packs of plain, grandma style cotton underwear.  And with glee, I stuffed a whole bunch of them into my trolley and strutted to the register just daring somebody to comment on it.

The fact is, these days I prefer comfort over cuteness.  The joys of motherhood.

Giving up on bedtime

I wrote this a year and a half ago when I decided that bedtimes were a waste of time (shock horror!).  I've had a bit of a giggle reading over it now, mostly because I can't believe I was ever this uptight about doing things the "right" way, even if it went against every single instinct I had.

Nowadays at the age of 2, Miss V has a wonderful sleep routine 90% of the time.  On the average day she'll go to bed between 6:30-7:30pm and sleep until at least 8-9am.  Some days she has an afternoon nap, others she doesn't.  Either way she sleeps at least 12 hours a day.

Of course we have days where she just doesn't want to go to sleep (usually when we've had a big couple of days and she's overtired), but for the most part once it hits around 6:30pm she grabs her teddy bear, says 'bye bye, goodnight' to everybody and takes herself off to bed while I get her milk organised.  So now for a trip down memory lane...

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I have recently given up the mere suggestion of a bedtime.  Since Little Miss came home, she's been breastfed on demand.  At her four month maternal child health nurse appointment I was told this was wrong.  Very wrong.  It is completely unacceptable for my four month old to go to bed at 11pm.  She should be in bed at precisely 7pm, woken at 6am and fed every four hours.  I was then shown how to swaddle her, lay her on her side to pat her back to burp her while she screamed hysterically then was sat down to watch a video which backed up what the MCHN was saying, including to only pick her up for a minute every 15 minutes.

Cue a month of guilt at not having her in bed at 7pm exactly.

And then I thought about it properly.  Little Miss loathes being completely swaddled.  So why was I feeling bad about not doing that?  There was also the fact that if I attempted to put her into bed earlier she would cry and cry and cry.  I believe I lasted about 5 minutes before deciding it was barbaric to just leave her scream.  There was also the issue that she wouldn't be getting her recommended daily intake of milk if I fed her the way she told me to.

In retrospect, I cannot believe I wasted a month of my life actually feeling guilty about letting her happily go to bed when she wanted, in the manner she wanted.  She was happy, I was happy, what was the problem?  That it didn't suit somebody else?  That should be their issue, not mine.  A half arsed attempt at doing it their way, the "right" way left both of us miserable.

So now I will share with you what our night sleep routine is like after deciding to give up the whole idea of a bedtime altogether.

There are no pacifiers here.  Little Miss doesn't need one, nor will she take one.  That means there is no screaming hysterically when one falls out of her mouth 2 minutes after she falls asleep.  Nor is there any need to get up half a dozen times during the night to put it back in her mouth.

The majority of the time there are no tears at being put into bed here.

There is no screaming or fighting sleep.

There is no stress.

There is no waking up during the night.

There is no stumbling into another room to check on her.

There is no need for monitors to make sure she's ok.

At 6 months old she goes to sleep within 5 minutes of being put into her bassinette, without any tears or drama and she sleeps on average 11 hours a night then wakes up happy and smiling.

Why?  Because I just can't see the logic in turning bedtime/sleep time into something stressful for both of us.  She goes to bed any time between 9:30pm-1am after a big feed and a big cuddle with me.  I feed her in my bed, let her drift off during the feed or while we're cuddling and when she's tired enough to sleep I put her into her bassinette which is about a foot away from my bed, tuck her in and that's it.  I don't need to obsessively check her or use a monitor because I can hear her breathing and because she's actually tired and feeling secure she goes to sleep easily and happily.

Despite the criticism I've had over such a late bedtime for her, I really believe she'll naturally just evolve into what works for her.  Besides, she's 6 months old, not 6 years old.  And even though I don't go to sleep at the same time she does, I go to bed at the same time and it's lovely.

Our sleep time preparation is a beautiful thing - full of love, cuddles, kisses, snuggles and ending with both of us going to sleep easily and sleeping long and well.  Why change that?

The answer to the question "how did you eat your cookies so quickly and where is your shoe?"

Earlier today Miss V. disappeared while I was loading the dishwasher.  She came back 30 seconds later minus a left shoe and the cookies she was eating.  Silly me thought she'd eaten the cookies...

To the left you will see aforementioned cookies, the left shoe and my pillow.

Not sure whether the motivation here was to share with me, encourage ants to come into my bedroom, or just because she believes that pillows are a good spot for half eaten cookies and one shoe. Sigh.

Love is...

Giving up your pillow pet for Seregi the plush meerkat

Penguin Overlord

I am the minion to a penguin overlord, who is also occasionally known as Miss Violet but prefers to be called Didit. At a week shy of 2 years old, she rules her domain (colony? do penguins have domains?) with a firm but mostly fair hand. 

 Fluent in French, not so big on English, clever, cheeky and hysterically funny, my penguin child makes for one adorable overlord. Her favourite activities include speaking French, eating crayons, putting rice crackers in the toilet, and being a nudist while I bemoan the fact that it’s the freezing cold and point out that we don’t live on a hippie commune or nudist colony in the tropics. 

 Apparently her Cabbage Patch Doll also likes to be a nudist, or so she tells me. Luckily her plush meerkat Seregi is already nude, so he poses less of a hypothermia risk. 

She’s little, but what she lacks in size she definitely makes up in personality. Occasionally she gets a little bit of a Napoleon complex happening, but gets over it fairly quickly when she remembers that being little means she can squeeze into tight gaps (next to the fridge for example) and laugh hysterically over nobody being able to get her out. 

 Feisty but affectionate, stubborn but sweet, my baby knows she well and truly has her mama wrapped around her little finger. 

 And all in all, most days I feel like the luckiest mummy minion in the world.

Because frogs belong in ponds, obviously...even toy frogs.