beckity

Would you like a yoghurt now Elsie? I ask, scooping up her empty plate. 'Yes!' she confirms, sliding down from her chair. 'Essie get!' She runs to the fridge. opens it up, grabs a soya yoghurt and returns to her place. I pass her a spoon and take the top off the pot for her. 'Oh lovely' I say, 'a blueberry yoghurt.' 'Boobree og-utt!' she says. 'Yeh-yeh-yeh-yoghurt' I correct. 'yeh-yeh-yeh-og-utt!' she responds. Leaving the og-utt aside for a moment, I concentrate on the blueberries. 'Blue-berry' I say. 'Boo-berree' "BLUE berry' 'Berloo berree' 'Blueberry' 'Boob baby' 'Blueberry yoghurt' 'Boob baby og-utt' I give up.

Elsie has sucked her thumb since she was two months old. This thumb-sucking has generally been accompanied by a cuddly blanket toy, which she twirls between her fingers as she sucks. In French these toys are called doudous, and Elsie has several of them. A doudou accompanies Elsie to her creche every day and is put to one side until nap time, which Elsie sometimes does and sometimes does not join in with. This morning, after she zipped her boots and popped the poppers on her coat I noticed her empty hands. 'Elsie my love, which doudou are you taking today?' She looked up at me, with a wide-eyed soulful look. 'No doudou' she said, shaking her head. 'Essie big girl!' and she flashed me a huge grin. She kissed me goodbye and walked out of the door, hand in hand with her Daddy. I watched her go, my two-and-a-half year old big girl.

I was holding a slumbering baby in my arms, looking out of our bedroom window at the snowy scene, when the car pulled up. I didn't think anything of it at first - we often get people parking outside our house - but when the two men got out, I started to take notice. There was something odd about the way they were walking; with purpose but slowly. They were both dressed in dark clothes and looked determined, as if they were actors in a film. The first guy looked back at the second and pointed towards our house. The second walked towards me, through the entrance to our front garden and towards our garage door. I started. What was he doing coming in through our garden? Suddenly I noticed a thumping in my chest and an urge to run. I went through to the bathroom where Marek was showering. 'There's a man trying to get in our garage!' I told him. He turned off the shower and looked at me 'what?' 'There's a man in our front garden' I said. 'It looks ...

The thing about number two is not that you don't worry as much, but that the worry is a little more in perspective. Whereas with the first one everything is critical and forever, you know by the time the second one comes along that everything is a phase. If she forgot how to breastfeed one week that doesn't mean that when she's relearned, she won't be so enthusiastic about it that she puts on a kilo in 2 weeks... This applies to number one too. Just because she has made a fuss about bedtime for the last few nights doesn't mean she won't grudgingly accept the routine tonight and go to sleep without a fuss. And just because we were losing our minds last weekend, feeling like every exchange was a mini battle doesn't mean she can't be a little charmer this weekend. Every tough time will pass, it will pass, it will pass...