Well it’s all go over here! A walking baby (yes, I know, she’s a toddler now) and another one kicking around in the proverbial oven waiting for its debut appearance in approximately twelve weeks time. Argh! I think, when New Baby arrives, that I’ll do a sort of monthly amalgamation post, covering Baby 1, Baby 2 and Me. Otherwise the whole diary-keeping thing is going to get seriously out of hand. But for now: Baby and Body, 17 Months…

Baby

We’re almost there with talking. We get a lot of “BYE” and a lot of “Dada” and a little bit of “Mama” and then, now and again, Angelica will come out with something that sounds exactly like it’s supposed to. For example, she pointed at Mr Bear and said, as clear as day, “Mr Bear”. The other most-used word is “more” – more of everything, please. “Keys”, “shoes”, “Dexter” (the dog) and “Sshhhhh” when it’s time for bed. What amazes me is that she understands everything – she can’t talk, but she knows exactly what I’m asking her to do. Put the monkey into the spaceship and close the door – perfectly understood. Why don’t you find the dolly and put her in the cart with your books? Loud and clear. It’s as though she’s just been quietly sitting and absorbing information, which is both brilliant and slightly scary – I keep doing a mental sweep of the past six months and wondering how many colourful phrases she might have accidentally heard! Imagine if she just suddenly said “cock womble” or “Trump is a f*ck trumpet” or something! God.

I have a feeling that 90% of her vocabulary will involve space-talk: aliens, martian moon bases, robots, alien dogs, robot dogs, spacemen, rockets, moon shuttles. She knows them all and also knows to cheer after the rocket countdown has begun and the man gets to “lift off”! Ha. Blame Early Learning Centre and Happyland for that – I went a bit crazy on eBay buying up the discontinued space stuff. Though I see that they now make the rocket again – it’s here online if you want to take a look.

Eating habits are getting better: we really made a rod for our own backs by lazily feeding her Ella’s Kitchen for too long! We still use the chunky pouches and the toddler meals (they’re invaluable when you’re out and about) but most of the time we’re just sitting down to eat with her and she gets mini portions of whatever we’re having. It was a bit of a rigmarole getting her to eat anything at first, but now she happily sits there with her spoon and little fork and copies us as we shovel down pasta or whatever it is that we’re having. Veg is still a difficult area, but, thinking back to my own childhood, when is it not a difficult area? I hated eating veg until I was about eighteen and yes, I had it from baby age…

The main lesson we learnt from the whole feeding thing was that you have to be quite tough, sometimes. It’s probably the first time we’ve really had to put our foot down with her – there have been a few table-related mini-tantrums – and I’m totally soft when she turns on the waterworks! But I suppose that this is the age that they start to be independent and want to do things their own way. Ah, how much simpler life is when you can just spoon food down and sit them in one place and pop them down for a nap about a billion times a day…

Anyway, everything’s a lot of fun. Lots of giggling and game-playing – she’s really starting to develop an edgy little sense of humour! I kiss her and try to cuddle her a lot more than I ever have done, because she’s still so cuddly and baby-like but also with this irresistible personality – it’s a deadly combination if you want to get anything done with your day! I must take a photo of her on my iPhone every seven minutes…

Body

Really, see my pregnancy updates for everything body-related, but in general I have to say that it is very hard carrying one baby on the inside and another on the outside! I go down the stairs at the rate of about one step per ten seconds because a) I can’t see where I’m going with my feet and b) I have to cling on to the bannister for dear life in case I send all three of us crashing down! It’s quite incredible, though, how the body adapts to different stresses – I use my thigh muscles a lot more now, because I automatically try to put less strain through my abs (ha! what abs?) and lower back if I’m lifting Angelica. Not a conscious thing at all, just something that’s naturally evolved. Clever old bodies, eh? I might look like a hairless silverback gorilla when I sit in the bath and my boobs rest on my belly, but it’s really doing something quite miraculous. Three cheers, etc…