The End of the Day

I hit Pinterest tonight for the first time in a long time and came across this quote. It got me thinking about how, despite being the slight cleanliness nut that I often can be, I have learnt to let go. The kids get to make a mess and be dirty, roll in the grass, run down footpaths with no shoes on, explore mud and muck, hell - they even get to play in the sand on a regular basis. And I sit back and calmly watch them be.

Some of my fondest childhood memories involve "baking" mud pies and cooking up leaf soups for anyone who would pretend to eat them, and I'm more than happy to be able to do the same for my children. Children should be dirty, messy, and yes, their eyes ablaze from all the adventures they've had, and all the stories they can tell about the amazing things they've done. They should go to bed with huge, tired grins on their faces.

I'd like to think that is what childhood is all about.

Interviewing the Birthday Girl (4)

Her party went off without a hitch. Emily loved it (and was more than pleased with the soundtrack), I think it's safe to say we all loved it. The kids had a blast and that makes the adults happy too. The crowd was fun, the weather perfect, the face painter an absolute hit, the colouring area never empty, the trampoline worked overtime and the cake was divine.

And a few days later, she is today officially four - and even understanding the concept of a difference between her party day and her actual birthday (which I had not expected), so we got to "celebrate" all over again today, and she was thrilled all day long. 

Before dinner, I sat her down for her Birthday Interview, which she loved.

Here are her answers this year. 

What is your name?

Emily

How old are you?

FOUR!

What is your favourite thing to do?

Colour and paint

What do you want to be when you grow up?

Lots of things... a nurse, a doctor, and a mummy

What is your favourite food?

Spaghetti, pizza and twirly pasta

Who do you like to spend time with?

Nannus and Nannas, and my aunties and uncles

What do you do really well?

I was really good at doing my orange dinosaur for the library, so painting.

What makes you laugh?

Tickling!

What is the best time of the day?

Singing my bedtime song

What are you afraid of?

Dinosaurs and big spiders

Who is your best friend?

Betsy. And Olivia and Maya.

What do you like to do with your family?

Stickers and dress up for school

What do you love to learn about?

Hippopotamuses and rhinos

Where do you like to go?

To school

What is your favourite book?

Charlie and Lola

If you had one wish, what would it be?

To have Elsa shoes

Do you get that she loves going to school?

But I was especially touched by her mention of Betsy. She hasn't seen or spoken to her since we were in Malta in July of last year, and yet she still considers her to be her best friend. 

My little girl is a sweet, kind, loving and considerate little soul, and I'm proud and honoured to be her Mummy.

Happy Birthday, little cherub. Here's to many, many more. 

Read last year's interview here.

Find the printable list of questions here.

Party Planning for a Certain Almost 4-Year-Old!

Now that Christmas and festivities are over, my focus shifts onto Emily's birthday. Her party is a few short weeks away and planning is well under way. I am currently working on a playlist. Emily has a few favourite songs (All About That Bass, Bailando, Wait On Me, Fun Fun Fun, and last but far from least, Boom Clap) that went straight onto the list. I then asked for friends' suggestions and the list is now looking great, and what's best - Emily approves of it.

We've been testing it out in the kitchen.

Luna didn't join in. She just watched us and thought we were mad, as usual.

This is what the list currently looks like:

Oh, yeah!

Dear Santa

Santa has taken note!

Starting Again

My big little girl started school, again. This time here in Dubai. She'd been counting the days from weeks before. She was so eager to meet her new friends and her teachers and start having fun. She was bored. There's only so much I could do to entertain two kids in a new country when it's too hot to do anything outdoors (and then Ramadan began and I completely gave up).

There were no tears. We knew there wouldn't be. She barely said goodbye at her classroom door, too thrilled to discover what adventures awaited her within.

I was worried that the long day would be too much for her. Longer than she's ever been away from me. She wasn't phased. She loves having lunch with her friends and her table manners have been praised (proud mummy), and she gets a three course meal every day. The child eats better than I do.

She started ballet classes last week. Seeing her in her tiny, sparkly tutu, those small ballet slippers, and a face full of excitement made my heart melt. She's so big, and yet she's so small.

Some afternoons, she gets home exhausted. There's been too much fun, too much learning, too much happening. The water system in the classroom's backyard gets mentioned a lot. She likes playing there, and the sandpit too. She talks about her friends and the things they've been up to. Olivia, Maya, Alice, Dauren, Matteo (her boyfriend, apparently), Mohammed, Oscar, Inez, Emmeline, Lexi and more.

Sometimes I look at her and she suddenly seems so different. Maybe somewhere in my mind I still think she's the little one year old I walked up and down Rochester High Street with, visiting the library, cafes, fish pond, so many times a week. Then I see her as she really is, almost four, and it takes me by surprise. Shock, almost.

I try to hug her for as long as I can - many times it's me drawing bedtime out - and when I'm lucky I get a tight hug back, and one of her trademark never-ending smooches on my cheek.

"How did you get so big?" I ask her.
"I grow every day and every night!"

Yes she does. She most certainly does.

Wordless Wednesday: Tea Party

Pink Strawberry Cupcakes

When David's parents visited last week, Emily discovered a game on her grandmother's ipad called Strawberry Shortcake Bake Shop. She loved it. It's a free app, though the game tries to make you pay over £10 to open up locked sections, which is most of it, but we resisted so she has baked the same cake over and over (and over and over) again.

Naturally, it got us talking about doing some baking together, and a couple of days later, out of the blue, Adam had a morning nap.

So instead of watching Frozen (AGAIN!!!), I suggested some baking.

She literally jumped at the idea.

We decided we'd make cupcakes. And they'd be pink. And they'd have jam and strawberries in them. It was the product of three separate recipes put together. It could have been disastrous... but it wasn't.

And she was thrilled to be actually baking. In truth, she mixed the batter for three seconds before proclaiming she was too tired to continue. She pushed two strawberries into two cupcakes before again informing me I'd better do the rest as she was too tired.

She was perfectly fine licking batter and jam off the spoon though - her first time, and if her reaction was anything to go by, not her last.

It was a regular cupcake batter, with pink gel colouring. We then poured some batter into the cupcake tin, added a teaspoonful of strawberry jam onto that. We then topped up with more batter, and popped half a strawberry on the top of each cupcake.

Bake. Cool. Eat.

They were very tasty.

Wordless Wednesday: No Paparazzi!

Clean Paint Toy

This thing I am about to tell you about... I have no idea what it is called, but we made one.

It was originally a plastic folder, into which I dropped a little bit of red, yellow and green paint - and glitter, and then sealed with masking tape. I also stuck it to a small piece of cardboard to make it sturdier.

I made it for Adam, but made the stupid mistake of using Mickey Mouse branded paints. When he saw them, all he wanted was the paint bottles. He barely glanced at my creation. He moaned and moaned for the paint tubs, until I desperately popped them into a ziploc bag (he'd have worked out how to open them otherwise!) and handed them to him.

Emily on the other hand, loved my clean paint toy and has used it for several days running to draw things into. We've used fingers, rolling pins, cups, toys, hands, you name it, it's endured it.

The paint is very close to being one big squelch of brown now (I wonder, had I used blue paint instead of green, might I have prevented it?) but we don't care. It's glittery, it makes pictures, we love it.

There may be more of these in our future.

The Teddy Bear Diaries 2014

Every May, Horton the Bear gets his 15 minutes of fame in Emily and Adam's growing up pictures. Luckily, I remembered to bring him to Dubai with us and although his job every other day of the year is to adorn our spare bed, the kids have this time not let go of him. Every day since we took the photos, I put him back on the bed, and find him in the living room. How they do it is beyond me: he is huge and heavy, but they're obviously determined. He may not look as well-kept in next year's photos!

Emily

Not as big a difference as between 2012 and 2013 but you can tell she's older. Her face is more mature, there is more wisdom in her eyes. She is, although it isn't very obvious, much taller than she was last year. We keep saying that we need to keep track of her height, and we keep forgetting to do so. But when she wakes up one day and informs you that she no longer needs a stool to get onto the toilet (and proves it), well, that extra height had to come from somewhere. 

Adam

Impressive difference (then again, he was barely two months old in last year's photo). And I can't get over the obvious upper body strength he now has. Don't be fooled, however. He may look like a well-behaved angel in this year's picture, but the reality is it was a lucky catch in a series of photos which I had no option but to take if I was ever going to get a decent shot. This picture was taken somewhere between him trying to jump off the armchair and pulling Horton down onto him. 

I'm so glad I stumbled into this series from the very beginning of both their lives.

If You Say So

Emily and I were talking about cousins the other day.

She asked me whether and why she has cousins

and I explained that since her Auntie Denise and I are sisters,

Denise's children are Emily and Adam's cousins - and vice versa.

"No, I'm not a cousin."

"Yes, you're Bekah, Gabby and Edward's cousin."

(dismissive tone) "If you say so, Mum."

"If you say so..."!!!!! 

And yes, she calls me "Mum" now.

I keep saying this, and I'll say it again: what's she going to be like as a teenager?!?

Have a good weekend!

Finger Paints and Play Doh

I am still not driving here in Dubai (patience is wearing thin...) so some days, we have no choice but to entertain ourselves at home. In fairness, there is PLENTY for the kids to do. We have kitted out an entire playground for them in the garden - only problem now being that it is already too hot by 10am to really spend much time outdoors. 

So Emily asked for some Play Doh and I thought I might give Adam another go with finger paints. 

This was the result...

More paint inside his mouth than on the paper and he really wasn't impressed by any of it, so that ended rather quickly. He then spent twenty minutes playing with the tubs of paint. Fair play.

Meanwhile, Emily made little Play Doh cakes.

Cast & Crew: The New Team

This post was written in February 2012, but for some reason, never published. I suspect it is unfinished, but I have just written a Cast & Crew post about Adam's 13-month favourites and it seems a pity to waste this. So here is Emily's. Tomorrow, Adam's.


Some of you may remember my original Cast & Crew post back in September. I really enjoyed putting that together and recently enjoyed reading through it (and it seemed to be enjoyed by a few of you too!). Six months later, now aged 13 months, Emily has changed a lot. Even looking at that picture of her in September's post feels like I'm looking at an entirely different child! Time for an update!


Fisher Price Activity Table
All I knew when we decided to buy an activity table was that I didn't want to get the Leapfrog one. Nothing against Leapfrog in the least - we own a good amount of their 0-24 months range! - but I've had enough of Leapfrog tunes. We needed fresh sounds. If not for Emily, then for me. So we found this one, it's very colourful and a little bit different from all the others and we went for it. No regrets: Emily loves having something she can play with while standing up, as well as another thing to use to pull herself up with. And best of all, she loves the songs (or so her swaying bottom tells me)!



Megabloks
She has two bags of these, one large, one small. When she wants to play, she'll hand me the small bag to unzip. And then it begins. She'll sit there taking each piece out and flinging it somewhere around her. If two blocks are joined, she will take them apart and fling separately. The extent to which these blocks are used for building things at this point is this: I build, she destroys. However I have noticed that over the last couple of days she has taken a certain interest in the way I build things, just this morning she was even handing me blocks to add on to my towers. Either way, she spends ages happily entertained by these blocks, and I have no doubt that they will continue to entertain for months to come once she finally works out what they're actually for.




Bop and Go Alien
Oh this alien! Both Emily and Gabriella own one and he is loved equally by them both. You press his head down and off he goes, sliding around, making alien noises and lighting up. He is meant to encourage babies to crawl and move after him. Emily loves hitting his head to get him to make his funny sounds over and over. She has now even realised that he doesn't work on carpet as well as on the floor. Fantastic fun.




Baby Picture Books!
They tell us that babies love looking at pictures of other babies and that's all well and good, but just watching her scan her bookshelf specifically for these three books is amazing. They are almost always the first she'll choose, she recognises them by their (well-creased) spines. Then she'll sit herself down and smile at the babies and talk to them. I'd recommend these - or any books with big, clear pictures of babies' faces - to anyone.




Happyland Family
They get chewed, poked and investigated, banged against each other and hidden under the sofa (of course). But they'll go far together!
(Note from 2014: Her love for her "people" is s till going strong!)

Again, the list could go on and on really. Those stacking cups are certainly moving up in her list of favourites!

Toilet Training: How It Eventually Happened

I never wrote about this because the timing of it all clashed with the move to Dubai, but I owe it to Emily to document the event before I forget it completely. 

Some of you might recall reading this some time ago...

Potty Training

I wish I didn't have to do this.

Shall I leave it at that? Says it all really, doesn't it? I hate it. It is the worst part of parenting there could possibly be. Worse than sleepless nights (ok maybe not that).

Then again, I say we're potty training but in reality I've done three (not consecutive) days of potty training, while living in denial and hoping it all magically happens on it's own to have me wake up one morning and find that Emily is comfortably in underpants and there is no need to have that bucket of water and Dettol handy.


I really did hate it and I didn't want to have to do it. I wanted to wake up one morning and it'd all be done. I kept trying every few weeks, while reminding her that she could be using panties if she really wanted to. And nothing got through to her. When she turned three on 28th January 2014, she was still very firmly in nappies, and I'd pretty much given up on that ever changing.

There was so much advice, and all of it so different. Several people told me it would just happen, just like the way I hoped it would. Yet that seemed too good to be true - they were obviously not telling me some important part of the story. Then there was the advice that said put her on the toilet at regular intervals (which in my opinion isn't toilet training, it's catching an accident before it happens). There was the "leave the potty in the middle of the room" advice... but we'd tried that and she still couldn't be bothered. Treats didn't work, promises of stickers didn't work, dancing with ridiculous levels of joy didn't work.

It boiled down to one thing ultimately: she didn't want to. Physically she was ready (she'd been dry at night for weeks by the time she turned three), but mentally, something wasn't clicking. She just wasn't ready.

Then the Clothy and Dummy incident happened, and at that point I knew the advice I so wanted to believe might be right. When she was ready, she'd let me know. So I decided to back off a bit and change tactics.

I left a little carrot. We'd promised her a bike once we moved to Dubai. But there was a catch... she would only get it if she was no longer wearing nappies.

I felt horrible. Was I blackmailing my own daughter? I suppose I was, but I did it kindly and only because I knew she could do it and obviously needed the push.

I also told her that since she was being so good at not wetting her nappies overnight, she could do her morning wee on the toilet. She did that every day for a few weeks (with lots of clapping and dancing and hugs and the tiniest chocolates known to man). Then we told her she could also sit on the loo before bed, and that became a habit too. I told her that I knew she wanted to stop wearing nappies and this was a good way to do it: we'd become experts at doing morning and evening wee on the loo, and once we're really great at that, we can do some others on the loo too.

I know my daughter, she works well in stages. But she was also close to being mentally ready to let go of those wretched nappies, and she really, desperately wanted that bike!

Less than two weeks after she turned three, on the 11th February, she woke up and told me she wanted to go to school in panties.

This was what I'd dreamed about and yet there I was trying to convince her otherwise. She wouldn't have it. She was going to school in panties that day. I quickly put together a bag with a change of clothes for her to take with her to school... there was not a shred of doubt that it would be used that day.

But when I picked her up after school, she was still in her uniform. Cue gobsmacked me. However, her teachers told me, she had been to the loo and hadn't done anything. She had last gone to the loo at 7am. This was 1pm. I had to get home FAST.

We didn't make it. Remember the smashed sunglasses incident? Yeah, the "distraction" was me hearing Emily go "uh-oh" as she let it all go on the pavement beside the car (thankfully not IN the car!)

The problem had been obvious. She used a toilet training seat at home, but there was no training seat at school. She was terrified she would fall in. So we got home and I made the training seat disappear. I showed her what needed to be done and I had to help hold her up at first, but by the evening she was sitting on the toilet alone without assistance.

She went to school in underpants again the next day and there were no accidents at all. Nor were there the next day or the next or the days after that. Her first accident was two weeks later in the middle of an indoor play area as I sat and told Maureen (of Island Fairy) how in awe I was of Emily for doing exactly what I'd dreamed she'd do. And to add insult to injury, I'd forgotten to pack socks into her change of clothes bag so Maureen had to let us have Robin's!

But there haven't really been any accidents since and two weeks after we moved to Dubai, she even stopped using pull-ups at night (which she was only using because I was worried about her wetting the hotel bed).

So there you have it. When people (and now I) tell you it can happen overnight, that they just need to be ready, just wait for them to decide they want to do it.... believe it. It's pretty incredible. As with so many other things, be firm, guide them, but let them lead the way.


She got her bike the day after we landed in Dubai. I was still so jetlagged, I barely remember it happening.

Keeping Little Specs On

It's been just over four months since Emily started wearing glasses (it feels like far longer). And in these few short months we have tried out several little accessories to help her little specs stay put. She'd look down and her glasses would slip down her nose until they're at the tip in what she calls her "granny look." It's actually really funny, but that's not the point.

One thing I promised myself when she first got glasses was that I didn't want them to hold her back from being a child. Meaning that, amongst other things, I wanted her to be able to play in a playground as she had done before glasses. We needed to find a way to make her glasses stay put.

We trawled opticians in Malta at the time, but no one had anything more than those awful loose strings that simply turn a pair of glasses into a necklace, or thick sports bands that only came in adult sizes. So we moved the search online... David came across Speccles, and I came across Stay Puts. I ordered both to try them out and see what worked best.

[image via babyology]

Speccles are clear, bendy plastic pipes which fit snugly onto the arms of a pair of glasses. They are as secure as it gets. Emily can do anything when she's got her Speccles on. They are slightly tricky for a child to remove, thus ensuring glasses don't get taken off (handy if you have a child who keeps trying to remove their glasses). We had no such problem but Speccles were our accessory of choice when Emily was at school simply because it meant it was more difficult for other children to remove her glasses.

[image via eyepowerkidswear]

Stay Puts are silicone hooks that are slipped onto the arms of a pair of glasses to keep them from slipping back and forth along the ear. They do an excellent job - even in the playground, Emily's glasses are always safely in place. They give the child freedom to remove their glasses if need be. Emily uses these most of the time because it means she doesn't need us to help her remove or put on her glasses, and it's generally less faff.

She'll be back in her Speccles once she starts school again in September though!


We have also begun patching. Her sight has responded to her lenses very well and she has improved significantly (I can count the amount of times I've caught her eye turning on one hand since New Year), but one eye has responded slightly better than the other. So we are now patching for half an hour every day.

Our optometrist didn't specify whether he wanted her in adhesive patches or not, as I hear some do. But finding patches is quite a bit harder than I'd ever have thought! We moved to Dubai four days after we were told to start patching so we were in a new place, trying to work out where we might find some. The only place we had any luck was at a pharmacy, where we bought plain brown adhesive patches. I promised Emily I'd buy her some fancy ones online, but in the meantime we'd use these regular adhesive ones.

We stopped patching less than a week later. Removing those patches hurt her so much, we couldn't bear to put her through it again for the sake of half an hour. I ordered the online patches and decided to wait until we had those (not quite knowing when that would be as Dubai post isn't hugely reliable).

They made it eventually and we picked up where we left off. I explained to Emily why we are patching and she was cooperative. She's even been out on her bike with a patch on!

We bought our patches from Kay Fun Patch, and are extremely pleased with them. Emily picked out the patterns she wanted herself (sparkly pink skull and crossbones, and a ballerina print one) and chooses which patch to use on a daily basis. They're good quality, reusable, and were worth the money.

Emily's new pair of glasses have transition lenses, so they "magically" become sunglasses when she's in the sun.

And what do you know... Bunny's got glasses too! (also via Kay Fun Patch)

As an aside, we have also tried Kay Fun Patch's Wedgees, which I do not recommend. After using Stay Puts, they seemed like the amateur little sister, didn't fit onto Emily's glasses very well, and were uncomfortable. Five minutes after trying them on, her Stay Puts were back on!

The Other Side

We've been in Dubai for a week now. It feels like we've been here forever.

The very beginning was not great. I kept thinking things had better get better. Malta International Airport offered up it's most unprofessional personnel, the plane we were on (for eight hours) was an old one so it lacked all the fancy stuff we'd promised Emily and stuff we'd banked on for entertainment, Adam screamed for three hours straight because he was annoyed that he wasn't in his cot, Emily gagged on a piece of pasta and vomited all over herself and her blankie, the meet and greet service we booked (to make things easier because we were landing at 1am and wanted as smooth a transition as possible) were waiting to meet and greet us at a different gate to the one we got dropped off at, and to top it all off, when we got to our (non-smoking but still stinks of smoke) apartment at around 3am, the cot we'd booked for Adam wasn't there.

I was in no mood for much else by that point. It was 3am, I was exhausted and really stressed out, and I regretted it all. Emily was in a similar situation, saying already that she wanted to go home. I hated that I couldn't muster up the positive energy to so much as try to convince her otherwise. All I could do was hug her.

The cot arrived and eventually, we went to sleep.

When we woke up, things were different. Somehow, we got the kids on to UAE time within the day, and they were in bed by 7pm. This was something I had been worried about as I didn't want to spend a week wasting mornings because they were fast asleep until 10:30am every day.

They did wake up late that first morning, but it was all about catching up on sleep. They were obviously so disorientated from the broken night the night before on the flight over, they had no idea whether they were coming or going so fell into the routine I offered them right away. I am hugely proud of them for this.

Everything got better. David and I were the walking dead that first day, but we had smiles on our faces. We ran some errands, and by the time David started work after the weekend (Sunday!), I was eager to and confident about getting out on my own.

The kids have adjusted well, Adam especially, but that's no surprise. Emily loves Dubai but has struggled with missing her friends. It's broken my heart (and the hearts of the mothers of the friends who also miss her) to think that they understand friendship so deeply at such a young age. We are eager to meet up with everyone in Malta in the Summer.

All in all, I regretted the move at 3am on the night we arrived, but there hasn't been a moment of remorse since then. I find myself wishing we moved here years ago. I feel at home, at last. I feel like I fit in. I am deeply happy and content and so very glad I gave in and said yes to the move.

I have lots to blog about. We celebrated Adam's birthday early the weekend before we left Malta, to be able to celebrate with family and friends there. We hope to move out of temporary accommodation and into the house next week. Emily is fully in big girl pants and Adam is trying to walk!

Here's a quick look at what we've been up to this week:

When There's A Dragon In Your Room

"Mummy, there's a dragon in my room"

At some point over the last few months, Emily became scared of dragons.

Not all dragons. Just the scary ones that invade her room.

I step on their toes and scare them away and she is pleased.

I have also taught her how to step on their toes

but that doesn't quite seem to scare them away as well as when I do it. 

But, just in case, I thought I'd up my game against the dragons. 

The next time my can of deodorant finished, I saved it. 

Then I found a cute little dragon image on Google Image Search. 

And I put this label together.

Stuck it onto the can...

et violà! 

What are your chances of finding that baby on a supermarket shelf?

So the next time Emily's dragon visits her room, I will be there armed with my feet AND a deadly spray.

Take that, dragons!

Clothy and Dummy

Emily loved her clothy and dummy. It didn't take much convincing to get her to take a dummy as a baby, and that was that. Around the time she was one and a half, we taught her that clothy and dummy were for sleeping only. So she'd have them in the car (bearing in mind this was the UK and most trips were long and involved a nap), and in her cot. We very rarely had a problem with this. We wouldn't take them around with us so there was no risk of us caving when she begged for them and sleep was no where close.

Because she only used them to sleep we didn't particularly mind her using them. This was until she began eating them both. She would chew on her dummy and even her clothy. We successfully took away her dummy about six months ago and left her with clothy, but the eating of clothy got even worse - to the extent that we were concerned she would choke on it and I often wondered about all the fibres she was swallowing. After three days, we gave dummy back to her in a bid to stop the muslin cloth chewing and decided we'd work on taking clothy away instead.

A while later, we introduced a blanket instead of clothy. A blanket that was very precious because it belonged to Emily when she was a baby, and Mummy chose it when Emily was still in Mummy's tummy. This seemed to work - the blanket never went past her lips, and she accepted it (eventually) as her clothy replacement.

We began hinting at the fact that she might be old enough to stop using a dummy. It wasn't an idea that was welcomed. So we dropped it and planned to tackle it later.

Come Christmas Eve, she suddenly begged and begged for a clothy back and she must have caught me in a weak moment because I fished one out of its hiding place and handed it back to her. The happiness was indescribable. She gently drew patterns around her face with the corner, and she wanted to show me exactly what she was doing so she did the same to my face too. I could understand why it relaxed her so much.

And then, just like that, she handed clothy and her dummy to me and said, "Mummy, you need to give clothy and dummy to Father Christmas because a little baby might need them. I'm not a little baby anymore, I don't need them."

I was shocked. I actually tried to convince her otherwise. I made it clear that if we gave them to another baby, she would not be able to get them back. Ever. She said she was ok with that.

I (slightly brokenheartedly) took them out of her room with me that night, a part of me dreading the distraught little girl I would need to face the next day.

But the little girl wasn't distraught. She was perfectly fine and she was happy that she'd helped a little baby.

There were a couple of moments, a few weeks later, when she randomly remembered clothy and dummy and sobbed her little heart out over them. I genuinely feel she mourned them. I hugged her and let her mourn. It happened maybe three times over the space of two months.

And just like that, Emily grew out of her clothy and dummy. Had anyone told me two days before Christmas Eve that she'd do that, I'd have exploded with laughter. It was then that I knew that potty training would be down to her too, so I took the pressure off, (mostly) stopped mentioning it, and - yup, we got there.

But that's another story for another day.