Leila Rose Petal

Pig Tails by Nicky P

Are rare photo for both attributes.

Drawing Time by MarkOMeara

Leila loves drawing more than almost anything else except perhaps milk. She draw all day if you let her. And you can’t let her, because her version of drawing often consists of bossing other people into drawing for her.

Draw Mum. Draw Dad. Draw Finn. Draw Leila. Leila’s shoes. Finn’s shoes…

I am sure you get the idea.

Incredible Climbing Two Year Old by MarkOMeara

Leila is a super confident little kid. Where Finn took things slowly at this age, Leila is fearless. She is also very talkative. She listens to everything and, quite deliberately and precisely, repeats new words out loud. On top of that her favourite phrases are “Where’s X?” and “I want X?”

All of this alternates between being utterly endearing and somewhat tiring.

Leila really does need a daytime sleep but she disagrees. The more she needs it, the more violently she disagrees. Today as a case in point.

Happily there is the secret weapon: telly. With this in mind, I put the Fimbles on and gave her a dummy.

She has been asleep on her bean-bag for an hour now and I am sure she’ll be happier for it.

Dear Leila,

You are really very clever with your words. It seems like you know hundred of words. Recently you have taken to asking when someone or something has gone.

Where Dad?
Where Fee? (Finn)
Where Lollie (Lola)
Where dog?
Where cat gone?

It goes on and on. And it’s terribly cute. But I think we’ll all be a bit happier when you have enough words to say exactly what makes you so cross and a bit more maturity so you will start to accept when you just can’t get what you want.

bye bye Lee-lay. Good night!

Dear Leila,

I must confess that when you moved from your cot to your bed I had visions of month after month of sending you to bed for hours and hours. This is how it was with Finn and you are even more headstrong than your astonishing brother.

And the first few nights were just like that. You would take hours to stay in bed and then, when you woke in the night, would take many hours to settle again. We all looked pretty battered and tired in the morning.

But since those first few days things are much better. Sometimes you take a whole hour to settle at night but often it is only fifteen or twenty minutes. And you generally settled quickly when you wake in the night. I think we all look and feel quite a bit better for this improvement.

Of course, right now you are sleeping so it is very easy to be besotted with you.

Dear Princess Horrorhead,

You used to be such a good sleeper. You went to bed at night happily, only the occasional grizzle. I can count on one hand the number of truly bad nights we’d had with you – including that one in the tent of Queenscliff of which we shall not speak. Then last week you developed a sudden and violent aversion to going to bed. You would cry and scream and cling to whichever parent was putting you to bed. You cried yourself to sleep each night. A few days later you started climbing out of the cot so on Tuesday we moved you into the big bed to spare you the danger of falling. Things went downhill from there.

Each night I put you to bed, say goodnight, turn out the light and shut the door. 30 seconds later you’re at the door, crying and banging on it. We repeat this process every minute or so for the next two hours until you lose consciousness. We expected this. We did it with Finn and we knew it would be exhausting and hard work. We didn’t expect the next bit.

You’ve always been a bit of a night waker but it wasn’t really a problem since you’d just talk and play in your bed for a while. Yes, it woke us and we would be tired the next day from an interrupted night, but we didn’t actually have to get up unless you were upset and, even then you settled pretty easily. Not anymore.

Now you can get out of bed, turn on your light and play or make lots of noise banging on your door so one of us has to get up to try to settle you, which doesn’t really work. Last night Dad was up with you for five hours. How he managed to go to work today, I don’t know. You even managed to wake Finn at 5am and that’s a major achievement.

We know that we will get through this stage eventually, but the number of years your dad and I will lose off our life expectancies as a result is unknown. It will be more than a few.

Through it all, though, we love you dearly and wouldn’t change a single curly hair on your head – even if you are the spawn of Satan.

Love,
Mum

Dear Leila,

I am sure there was a time before you were around but I can’t remember it clearly at all. It feels like you have been a part of our family forever. I am quite certain that, even with Finn’s lovely personality and verve, things were terribly quiet and rather empty without the crazy curly haired energy that we now all live with and love.

I hope you have an absolutely lovely birthday tomorrow by lovely girl and I’m sure we’ll have a smashing time at your little party on the weekend.

love and kisses and heaps more

your adoring dad.

Attack of the Giant Toddler by Nicky P

Leila has a heaps of words, even if many of them are only really the start of the actual word. She used “okay” to mean she is hurt. Nicky thinks this is because when she falls over Nicky asks he if she is okay.

Last night things were not really okay.

In the wee hours I heard this screaming so I got down to Leila’s room quick smart. Although I could hear her screaming I could see she was not in her cot. For a moment I had thought she might have gotten out and crawled into one of the shelves at the end of her cot.

Not there either.

Secondly later I found her, trapped down between the cot and the wall and quite unable to move. I quickly pulled the cot out from the wall and rescued The Princess gave her a cuddle while she sobbed “okay!, okay!”.

The good news is that after a cuddle with us and a bottle she went straight back to sleep for the rest of the night.

Still, it was an amazing debut of silly kid behaviour. This comes close to surpassing Zelda, who got her head stuck in a tin can one day. She has certainly left Finn for dead.

With any luck this was a freak incident and there won’t be too many future episodes of the Incredible Night Climbing Baby.