Words

‘What is this?’ ‘That’s a charger / crumb / pirate / apple seed / (insert noun here)’. ‘That’s a penguin, it does look like a duck, they are a bit similar’. These are the conversations on repeat in my house, as we label every single item over and over. This, I have discovered, is how children learn language. One word at a time. Imagine, learning the whole English language this way. We all did. Yet, now I get to observe this, I get to be the teacher, I get to see that learning language is actually a full time occupation. My daughter never takes a break. It amazes me the way she stores these words up. Day by day, her vocabulary expanding exponentially.

We never taught her the sentence ‘what is this?’, we don’t know where she learnt it, what a useful sentence it is! She can use this sentence to learn and learn and learn! Apparently, the average 20 month old can learn 10 or more words a day.

Now, at this age, I can see the magic of books. I can see just how much my daughter learns from looking at books and pointing to each item on the page and either labeling it or asking ‘what is this?’. The stories are not important right now. It is all about the pictures and their names.

“Harry, Harry, Harry”, she says as she points to the red frog on the playmat. She is remembering the frog called Harry, who looks nothing like the frog on the playmat, in the book Hungry Harry. A book that we haven’t read for a while. Her memory astounds me.

I have a newborn who makes a few gurgles and sounds and I realise how far my first born has come, how over time her sounds have slowly developed, first into her own language and now into words we can understand.

As her language develops I am getting a better insight into the depth of thought in my daughter’s head.

A few weeks ago, out of nowhere, she said to me ‘where is Gogo (granny)?’ This question might seem simple enough, but it amazed me and saddened me in equal measure. She hadn’t seen her Gogo since we left South Africa four before. It occurred to me that she’s probably been wondering this the whole time but just didn’t have the words to ask. How wonderful language is, that she can finally be heard and express some of the things inside her head. How much this question made me realise that I must explain things to her over and over, even if she doesn’t ask. Every time she sees a mobile phone she picks it up and says ‘Gogo’ because she knows we talk to Gogo on the phone. How wonderful that now, finally, she can talk back to Gogo. How cute it is to hear her say enthusiastically, ‘hello, hello, hello’. How smart she seems when she looks at her baby sister and says ‘ra-ra (Zara) shleeps (sleeps)’, or when she sees me making dinner and she says ‘cook, cook’. It shows me she knows exactly what is going on.  

To me, few things are as adorable as her voice, her mispronounced words, her insistence, the effort she puts in to being understood. She is trying so hard. She is learning that some words get her what she wants and some don't. She runs around the house saying, 'Katie, Katie, Katie', because she hears others calling me that. And, after a while when I haven't responded, in her loudest possible voice, 'M U M M Y'.

Waiting for nap time

I love being a mum. And I adore my daughter. When I watch her play and learn and grow it absolutely melts my heart. Which is why I feel so guilty admitting that most days my favourite time is nap time. And lately I have been deeply yearning to be something more than a mum. Today is one of those days. When everyone else in the house got up, packed their bags and headed out the door to their jobs and I found myself at home, my daughter and I in our pjs, building duplo towers and I wondered just how much longer I could put two pieces of duplo together and pull them apart again before I lost my mind.

Perhaps I need to fill my days with more activities? Get out of the house more? Spend more time with friends with kids? But I actually do this, I plan a play date or activity for nearly every day. It is how I stay sane.

Having recently moved to a new place I’ve been looking around to find the playgroups and kids activities in my area. And there’s heaps happening. But I’ve been lacking motivation to get involved. I spoke to a friend about it and she said ‘what you need is to find something that is meaningful to you’. And I realised that is the exact reason that story time at the library isn’t cutting it.

Often, after drinking 500 pretend cups of tea, I find being home with my daughter boring. Yet I would never be bored if I was home alone. I have big dreams and plans for my own life, much of which can be achieved at home. My frustration is that I just can’t seem to reach them. Instead I spend my days trying to teach my daughter to pick up the towels she just pulled off the shelf and sit in her highchair.

Each morning I have a plan of things I would love to do that day, and I always think ‘I’ll do that in nap time’. I run a business in nap time, I clean the house, I use it to catch up on sleep because my daughter still wakes us up at night, I do the family admin, I read books about babies and toddlers, I sort and plan and get ready for our new baby and I use it as my time to do anything that I want to do for myself (like write this blog or any creative project that I have on the go). There is just so much that I want to do during nap time. And I often find myself frustrated that I can’t get it all done. The problem here is that I have tried to squeeze an entire life of stuff into a 1.5 hour window each day.

I had a realisation last year when it occurred to me that nap time was only slightly longer than the time it took my husband to get ready for work in the mornings. He would normally have an hour to himself before work while my daughter and I were still asleep. The difference is that no one had any expectations of him in that hour. All he had to do was get himself ready for work. On the other hand I have all kinds of ideas and plans for nap time. Surely I can do it all, other women seem to!

When I imagined being a stay at home mum I imagined myself as the baker, the crafty mum, the well educated reading mum who knows everything about kids’ development and parenting, the exercising mum, the mum with homemade pintrest toys, the mum with a fridge and freezer full of healthy snacks, the mum who was always trying out new recipes. Never would I be bored as a mum! But, in reality it took me three months to make playdough. Sometimes it takes hours to cook a meal because I also have to hold my daughter’s ‘baby’ and repeatedly wrap it up in a teatowel and shush it to sleep. For some reason watching me rock and shush her doll makes my daughter incredibly happy. That’s why, despite my daughter being 18 months old and me loving home and creative projects, you haven’t seen any on my blog so far. I am planning to make a mobile for my new baby though….. But I’m not even going to try to fit that one in to nap time.

Once I started talking about this I discovered I’m not the only one facing this challenge. A friend of mine has started getting up at 4am just so she can have three hours to herself before her mummy duties kick in. Others I know find meaning in going back to work. Others have their toddlers in childcare. Others, perhaps, simply love playing with duplo. 

This isn’t a blog post with answers. In fact it is a post with a question to other mums. I am genuinely curious – how and when do you get things done? What do you use nap time for? Do you feel less productive than before you had kids and how do you cope with this? And, most importantly, how much time can you spend building duplo towers?

18 months is...

18 months is hiding behind the curtain at bedtime, always insisting on wearing the same dress, singing ‘twinkle, twinkle’ constantly, making up the words but getting the tune and timing almost perfect, making sure everyone always has shoes on their feet and ensuring doors are always shut.

18 months is tucking Wilfred (teddy) under the blanket each night and patting him to help him fall asleep.

18 months is being left alone for a moment and appearing with eyeliner drawn all over her face. It is knowing that an eyeliner pencil is for the face and not for paper.

18 months is pointing at my belly and saying ‘baby’, and me wondering if she understands the change that is about to happen in our family. It is me seeing tiny babies - floppy, cuddly, sleepy babies – and realising just how far she has come. It is seeing her as my child, instead of my baby. It is me finally thinking she might be ready to be a big sister.

18 months is knowing to be gentle with babies, looking after them so well and bringing them toys to play with. And then it is forgetting that babies can’t get their own toys and taking them away again. It is learning to share, but not doing very well at it.

18 months is wanting to put everything away. And constantly surprising me that she knows where things go. It is opening the cutlery drawer and putting spoons in, regardless of if those spoons are clean or dirty. It is always helping wipe the highchair after dinner. It is seeing me annoyed because there are clothes lying on the floor and picking them up and stuffing them in a drawer (not the right drawer, but a drawer none the less). It is me remembering the (long) days of her unpacking every cupboard and drawer in the house and being amazed at how quickly they passed.

18 months is standing still and silently behind a cabinet, waiting for someone to find her. It is exploding in laughter when they do.

18 months is bedtime with Daddy and breakfast with Nanna. It is living with grandparents and lots of attention. It is walking out the front of the house and always wanting to cross the road and go to the park. It is loving going on the slide. It is climbing up and down play equipment that just six weeks ago seems so big and too hard for her. It is climbing in the pram and sitting there insisting she is taken for a walk.

18 months is being tired but not wanting to miss any of life by sleeping. It is crying at bedtime but almost learning to sleep through the night. It is long naps and feeling great afterwards.

18 months is a time of rapid change. Of moving to her own bedroom, of wondering if she is nearly ready to toilet train, of drinking less milk and eating more food, of learning to rinse and spit after brushing her teeth.

18 months is understanding everything. Knowing more than we give her credit for. It is (finally) listening to instructions.

18 months is 12 teeth and new words every day. It is summer, sunshine, play dates, parks and friends. It is acting like every day is the best day of her life. It is living life at full speed, charging towards the future. Tomorrow, it is being closer to two years old, than it is to one.