Now with photo



Flying

Anya LOVES walking around like this: arms outstretched behind her like wings, fingers grasping at the air, leaning forward to be more aerodynamic and humming happily to herself. I guess when you've learned to crawl and walk and climb in the fairly distant past, it's easy to convince yourself that flying will come to you next.

Zombie baby

Anya has a little table in the kitchen where she eats meals and draws and generally is in charge of stuff. On Australia Day on Thursday, her best friend Sofia came over and they did some drawing together. In Anya's case, this tends to involve a reasonable amount of sucking on pens, and so though we tried to stop her, by the end of it her gums and lips were blue. Frankly, her mouth looked like that of a zombie or, at best, a very broken meth addict. But somehow she still managed to be charming.



It's just a phrase she's going through

Anya's personal dictionary these days has exploded since I last wrote about it; I'd say she knows at least 100 words, probably closer to 200. But phrases are clearly difficult: Mum reckons she was saying "daddy car" while I was driving when she was over a few months ago, but there haven't been repeat performances so I tend to think that was a fluke.

That's changed now, though. Each morning we have breakfast at the kid-sized table in our kitchen. Kate and I help feed her, sitting on kiddie chairs with our knees around our ears. She's very particular about this whole process: if we ever sit on her favourite chair she stands behind us, grumpily thumping our backs and keening with frustration, until we surrender it.

Sometimes we'll be buzzing round the kitchen when breakfast is first served, preparing her daycare lunchbox or getting ourselves coffee. But Anya doesn't think this is at all appropriate: mealtimes should be treated with proper respect, so she fixes you with a reproving eye and says, "Mummy sit".

Now I  know I'm not her mummy, and she knows it to. But this particular order is applied equally to both of us. I suspect it won't be the last: most toddler language is in the imperative mood.

Pony club

On Sundays we usually go to the farmers' market in north Marrickville, not far from our house. They have a pony ride guy there and Anya is obviously completely fascinated by the "hossie". I was actually feeling a bit groggy on Sunday and Kate was off looking at bikes, so it took all my limited energy to field and herd this little girl who just wanted to go up and touch the real life hossies like the ones in her book. Mainly this meant not letting her get too close to the back legs, but eventually we asked for a little ride.
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She didn't like that. I tried to sit her on he saddle a couple of times but she lifted her legs and bucked as if I was feeding her into the jaws of a monster. Standing in the grass, arm reached out towards the pony's head as it cropped, she was much happier.

Tooth brushing



Anya hates people messing with her face. Just after mealtimes, you can hear bloodcurdling screams erupting from our house as we try to wipe that bit of yogurt from her bottom lip or remove that bit of pumpkin from the end of her nose. So I wouldn't blame you for guessing that tooth brushing round here is an endless struggle.

Well, in actual fact it's a bit of a success story. I think part of this is that some friends gave us some tasty toddler toothpaste, and Anya treats her toothbrush a bit like those old Pez sweets dispensers: as an intriguing device to deliver concentrated pellets of flavour to the mouth. She would sit there with a faraway, pre-sleep look in her eyes and contentedly suck the minty water out from between the bristles, filtering it through her teeth; it wasn't exactly brushing, but she was enjoying herself, which was more than half the battle.

The next stage was just trusting her to get it right and giving a good example. I suspect if we'd tried to manhandle her into doing it properly she'd have protested violently; instead, we just brushed our teeth at the same time, so she'd try to imitate how grown-ups do it. That seems to be working now, to the extent that she'll even let us have a go to reach her eight front teeth and the one or two molars that have sprung up at the back. Thank god reverse psychology still works on her--I feel the day is not far off that she sees through this particular parental stratagem.