It’s going to be a bumpy ride but you will get there eventually. The key to being a parent? realising that you’re making it work even when you will never feel like you are.
For all of those who have been around since the beginning, here is the 12 – 18 Months top ten, for any newcomers, this is what you have to look forward to.
1: You’ve felt a pea being pushed into your ear for the first time since you were a toddler.
2: You will spend more time talking on your child’s plastic flower phone to made up people than you will on the real phone. The kicker is that it doesn’t take very long before you start having quite long and meaningful discussions with yourself on it.
3: The phrase “aww that’s so cute” has been replaced with “Hey! NO! Stop Doing that!”
4: If you thought the never ending drone of the sing song Fisher Price voices were irritating wait unil your toddler decides to use (any) toys as banging objects and furniture weaponry. It’s just more fun if your shape sorter is singing “.. shapes are in my cookie jar..” whilst being dropped from a great height or pressed and dragged across perfect floorboards or leather furniture.
5: If you have pets you will find yourself up against of whole miriad of disgusting phrases that if people who don’t have a toddler could hear, would think you were just really funny. “Don’t lick the dogs mouth”, “Don’t touch the cat’s bum”,
6: You’ve uttered “The baby did it!” and meant it. It’s around this time when your criminal career may begin as Baby decides that in all manner of split second opportunities, they will steal something off a shelf of a supermarket or store and hide it in whatever fabric around them will cover it up. If you have found a half nibbles grape or crayon under your baby’s dress when you’re packing the grocories in the car then you’re not alone.
7: What is yours… is theirs. And this means no longer yours until they decide to discard it. At this point (if not destroyed) it is yours until they see / hear / sense that you have it again, at which time, once more it will no longer be yours.
8: A little voice calls out a tongue tied half whisper of “mum mum?” and you fall in love all over again each and every time.
9: You spend your afternoons together paying very close attention to pointing out everyones nose. There is Straberry Shortcake’s nose, there is Dora’s nose..
10: It’s not all so scary though.. You Know You’re A Parent When your toddler walks up to you, smiles, puts there little arms round your neck and gives you a kiss. ..
… Of coarse it’s a little more awkward, I didn’t mention the stumbling on the way over, almost hair pulling at the back of your neck and missing your mouth whilst sticking out their tongue at the last minute for the kiss. But you get the idea..
