Late last year Alex and I were in a coffee shop and at the next table was a family with a toddler who calmly sat on a chair and had some milk from straw carton. We had two toddlers attempting to climb the walls and eat the furniture. I made a specific point of asking the age of the Buddha like Toddler – 20 months. It was a flash forward to six months in our future.
Yesterday we sat calmly (if briefly) in a coffee shop whilst we all had our drinks. Finally. Finally. FINALLY.
It’s been a long hard slog but 19 months is sweet. Yes there are tantrums and random demands. But the girls play and are fun. It’s not just waving a toy in the face of a baby or reading the same book a zillion times or having the same picture pointed at a trillion times with a chorus of “That. That. That.”
They build train tracks and with Duplo. They draw and ask us to draw things (mainly Daddy) for them to copy. We put together floor puzzles. They try to pat balls and dribble. They hold our hands when we are out and don’t lick the upholstery.
The biggest thing is that the girls have interests. Interests. Not just holding onto a toy with a vice-like grip but showing a real interest in things. At the moment it’s birds (‘bo-bo’ in toddler vernacular) . When my mum was here she bought them a bird book as we aren’t familiar with North American birds, and the girls watched us looking up birds we’d seen in it.
They started to get very excited when a bird (or squirrel or rabbit or deer) was in the back garden. So we got a bird feeder and now we are all bird watchers. The girls each have a bird book that they carry around and “look up” birds when they fly into the garden. It’s the most amazing thing.
