Tales about a toddler

Going bananas
When shopping at the Spar a few days ago, I let Amy choose the bananas and put them in the plastic bag. A young man was next to us, choosing fruit and smiled at Amy as she looked rather cute as she went about her assigned task. When she was finished, I tied a knot in the bag, handed it back to her and said, “Right now you must hand the bag to the man to be weighed”, as I turned to walk towards the man standing by the scale about 1 metre away. I heard a giggle behind me and looked back to find that Amy had just handed the man choosing fruit, her packet of bananas! Her was very amused. Time to be more descriptive mommy!

Snow Angels
I walked into the lounge the other day to find Amy lying on her back on the floor, waving her arms madly about. On the TV played Winnie the Pooh, with a scene where he and Piglet are lying in the snow, making snow angels. I guess, so was Amy!

Speaka de Engleesh
Despite starting early, Amy’s language ability is not as good as it should be. If it weren’t for the fact that she is an intelligent child and ahead in other areas of development, I would be worried rather than just frustrated. Call it due to regression, laziness, stubbornness or whatever you will but my child will only honour you with a word or sentence on her terms. You can’t force her or bribe her, it just doesn’t work. We joke that she speaks a mixture of German(she says ‘Ein’ and “Nien”), Russian(she says ‘Da’ for yes) and Chinese (her general gobbledeegook). Craig often says to her, ‘speaka de engleesh’. She just laughs. Although she knew how to say ‘Nina’, when her sister was born, she simply refers to her as ‘the baba’ and is quite content saying, “No baba, no, dis Amy’s” at every opportunity when Nina has a toy. She calls her granny, ‘Gaga’, her grampa, ‘Gagi’, her one great aunt is ‘Mimi’ and now the other is ‘Bugger’! Wendy’s daughter Lily has now been affectionately been named, “Buggy”. Amy will frequently repeat the last word I say in a sentence and so recently I have heard words like “Wait, Ice-cream, umbrella, naartjie, take it, Mickey Mouse ” .  But then they are gone.  Her favourite sentence now is “Mum, Amy want go out” which she repeats until she feels I have gotten the message and we are heading towards the garage door! She may not use all the words the English language has to offer, but she certainly gets her message across!

A Hairy Tale
This is a rather embarrassing story. I hope no-one from child services is reading.  About two weeks ago my hair had been driving me mad. After realising I had 5 different hair shades going on but lacked the finances for a hairdresser, I finally bought some good old hair-dye to apply at home. It had been a while since I dyed my own hair – 3 years actually! Things have changed since then, for example now I have a two year old clinging to my leg while I try and apply the noxious liquid to my scalp.  I tend to be slap-dash with this kind of thing at the best of times, but now it was even worse. While throwing the stuff on my head as quickly as possible, I felt some splash to the floor. Fortunately the floor is tiled, so I removed it easily with a cloth. I thought nothing more of this. Later that day I noticed that Amy had some type of sticky patch in her hair and still wondered how she had managed to get food there.  She would not let me fiddle, so I just left it. Much, much later, – just before her bath, I picked her up and gave her a big hug. As I did this I got a whiff of peroxide and thought OMG!!! I (finally) put two and two together and realized that some hair dye must have fallen into her head while she was clinging to me that morning. It had been there THE WHOLE DAY! (The box says leave for 20 minutes). I was petrified of the result and even kept this knowledge from Craig as I anxiously awaited the outcome. Fortunately her hair is not too much darker than mine and so it just looked like a highlight – a patchy one, but not too noticeable, Craig never noticed until I told him, neither did my mom, but my aunt did! I am just grateful I wasn’t being adventurous and dying my hair black or fire-engine red.

Tagged as: hair, names, snow angels, toddler