Leila Rose Petal

Kids on a Ride by MarkOMeara

Leila is a very spectacular kid. When she is cross it’s a show and when she’s happy or having fun it’s a massive show.

She especially loves doing stuff with Finn so it’s no surprise that she is so happy in this photo.

Running Kid by MarkOMeara

Finn is not a lazy kid but he’ll sit in a pram forever if you’ll do the work. Leila is quite different and insists on walking on her own and in her own direction.

While we admire her personality it can be pretty tiring,

Power Leila by MarkOMeara

I just don’t remember Finn being so relentlessly curious as Leila is now. Finn certainly interacted with the world but Leila just seems to devour the next skill or experience. I guess it’s the way with a second kid: she just wants to do what the big kids do.

Dear Leila,

You are 18 months old and quite the grown up toddler now. No more our little baby girl.

Since you began walking you seem to have been running developmentally. It’s like a whole lot of things were just waiting for you to walk on your feet and since then they’ve been rushing to happen. Except for teeth. They still take a very long time to happen.

One of the nicest things has been the way you talk. You’re picking up new words all the time: Too many for me to list. You’ve always been quite good at making yourself understood, but now you can use words to do it too. And I can ask you questions and get very definite yes or no answers (your brother could learn a thing or two from you on this one). “Would you like a biscuit?” “Yeah!” “Do you have poo?” “No, no, no” - that last response is not to be trusted, though. I usually go by what my nose tells me when it comes to poo.

You might tell me sometimes when you’ve got a pooey nappy (and occasionally before it happens) but that doesn’t mean that you’ll let me change it without a fight. In fact about the only thing clothing-related that you’ll go along with happily is putting on shoes and socks. You love to have shoes on. I’ve had to put them out of reach to stop you bringing them out of your room all the time and insisting upon wearing them. You try to put them on yourself too, but you can’t do it yet and that leads to tantrums. Once you have shoes on you’re all ready to head to the ’sho’, which could be kinder, the park, or the actual shops. And when we do go out you insist on walking out to the car under your own steam.

You feed yourself most of the time now and you’re even beginning to master the use of a fork. When my help is required you hold the spoon or fork out to me and say ‘do’. Sometimes you just want me to load them up for you (usually so with the fork) and will do the rest yourself. Sometimes you’re happy for me to do the work while you play with a puzzle.

In spite of having access to cars and blocks (and even playing Lego with Finn) you’re very, very interested in dolls. Your favourite is ‘Baby’, a little doll I bought you a couple of months ago. Every time we go through the toy department at T@rget you point and yell ‘doll!’ in the girlie aisle.

The loveliest thing about you being 18 months old is your relationship with Finn. You adore him and he mostly adores you back. I love to hear the two of you giggling as you play some terribly silly game together. It makes me so, so glad that you’re here with us that my heart could burst.

Its lovely having the 18 months old you with us.

Love,
Mum

Watching Telly In My New Hat by Nicky P

Dear Leila,

Tomorrow you will go into the toddlers’ room at childcare. It won’t be your first time there - you’ve visited a few times when other kids have been away - but it is your first day there permanently.

To honour your foray into the world of (slightly) bigger kids I knitted you a new hat over the weekend. You’ll be playing outside more in the toddlers’ room and will have to keep your hat and shoes on. Since your other hats keep getting misplaced in cars and prams I thought it would be a good idea for you to have a specific childcare hat that will live in your bag.

Its a little wonky (I’m hoping that washing and blocking will fix that) but it will keep your head warm and look very cute. And the leaves on the top will make it easy to pick you out from the crowd.

Love,
Mum

Dear Princess Petalpants,

I’ve been meaning to blog about the words you use for a while but keep forgetting. We just had a little conversation, though, and I thought I should sit right down and blog about it.

You were standing next to Finn’s desk looking at the pile of activity books we have there for him. You looked at me and said “Book.” So I said “Book?” and you said “Book”. Then I said “Would you like a book?” and you said “Yeah”. So I got some of your books out for you and you’re looking at them now.

When I write that you said ‘book’ I am exaggerating a little but I’m not sure how to type what you actually said. Like most of the words you use it sounded like the word ‘book’, but without the ‘k’ sound on the end. I don’t know how to type that. You also say ‘dog’, ‘cat’, ‘down’, ’sock’ and ‘bath without the endings on them.

Your favourite word at the moment seems to be ‘juice’, which comes out sounding like ‘choooozzze’. You are also rather fond of ’shoes’ - both the word and the object - and that comes out sounding like ’shooshoooze’. This should not be confused with your word for the fish which is ’shoosch’ (or something like that).

‘Ta’ is reserved for when you’re giving things to people and when you’re given something you say ‘dada’ in a singsong tone that reminds me of one of the carers at childcare saying ‘there you go’. This is quite different from the way you said ‘dada’ to Dad last night. There can be no doubt that are different words/phrases. ‘Hello’ is a word you’ve been using for a while too. You say it as ‘hedo’. You love to say “hedo dog”, “hedo cat”, “hedo shooosch”.

As I wrote above, you also say ‘yeah’ when things are offered to you. At one point you said it a lot, but it’s becoming less frequent. ‘No’ is also a lot less frequent than it used to be and generally appears to reserved for times when you really, really don’t want something or someone is trying to do something you don’t want them to do - like Dad washing your hair.

‘Mum’ is another word you use sparingly. You say ‘mumumum’ sometimes when you are upset. Today in the car Finn said ‘Mum’ as he almost always does at the beginning of a sentence and you followed up with ‘mumumumumum’. It was quite cute.

Love,
Mum