Yesterday morning I took Willow down to our local playground. My mum often goes there and has been telling me about the amazing new things the bean can do, and finally this week’s stormy weather eased long enough for me to see for myself.
Sure enough, she’s an adventuring champ! If you pop her down on the platform on the far right of this photo one minute later she will have traversed the entire structure and be at the bottom of the blue slide, ready to go again!
She crawls across the swinging bridge…
… through the tunnel…
… executes a crazy yogic manoeuvre to get onto the slide …
… WHEE!
Here’s a video of the whole journey:
This playground also has a baby swing and a grown-up swing, so after pushing her for a while I jumped on myself and we swung together. So fun! I like a swing :)
Honestly, it was nice to do something with Willow outside our usual routine, because we’ve been having a scratchy time lately. It’s very tempting just to show you the cute photos and talk about her sweetness and light, but I’m conscious of how I feel somewhat substandard when I read perfectly edited mama blogs and I don’t want to gloss over the difficult bits.
I think this phase is all about frustration for both of us, as Wil clearly understands quite a lot of what we say to her but doesn’t have many options for expressing her own wishes. She can sign for food, and I can tell when she’s tired, but otherwise there’s a lot of attempts at communication we really can’t interpret. And she definitely wants things! All day long she seems to want to be simultaneously on and off my lap, which is somewhat difficult to implement. Pick her up and she struggles away, put her down and she clings to my clothing and tries to drag herself up again. All day.
She’s getting a lot more persistent about forbidden objects, and angry when she can’t get them. I put a baby-proof catch on an additional kitchen cupboard, because she was getting in there and spreading my utensils all over the house several times a day, and now she has a whingefest every time she tries to open that door.
She also gets cross about not being able to do everything herself. Here I hand her a plastic container she can’t quite latch shut, and she makes her toothy frustration face.
I admit, it’s kinda cute in isolation, but our days have a lot more grizzling and grumping. I understand this is all fairly standard behaviour for her age, and I think (hope!) it will improve once her vocabulary grows and she gains more coordination. Having JSR back at work means I’m dealing with her a lot more on my own too, which I’m probably not as well practiced at as I used to be.
And yet, it only takes a smile or giggle or adorable dance move and my heart melts again. There’s the reality of having a toddler: daily frustrations but overall joy :)
