No more nappies... most parents of small kids dream of the day their toddler will toilet train. Let's get one thing straight... nappies are easy. When your child is in nappies they wee or poo as the case may be in their nappy, then you change it when you have a second. It doesn't matter if they are in the pram or the car, it can wait.
When your bundle of joy has started wearing underpants, or 'nickies' as they are known in our house things change. They go to the toilet on their schedule, not yours. If they need to wee/poo/whatever, you drop everything and take them as you can't take the chance that they are just kidding.

G has been dry during the day for about 4 months now, she decided shortly after her 2nd birthday that she was big enough to do her business in the potty/toilet and really hasn't looked back. Until last week when we had a bit of a regression she had had very few accidents. We are still doing night time nappies but that doesn't worry me in the slightest, she will be dry in her own time and there is no pressure, I was quite happy to keep changing her nappy during the day too but the fact that it was so easy reassures me that she was well and truly ready.

I had a rotten afternoon. Saturday night everything was removed from the boot of the family car as I was doing a market stall for the ABA and had to fit in a board, change table and some suitcases of literature and changing supplies... so come today I had an empty boot, containing only a stroller. Everything else from my car was at Chuq's work.

So, after our walk we had to go and deliver some nappies, no problems! Except for the fact that the skateboard for the stroller and one of the orders was at work with Chuq. No worries, we went and collected them. 'Do you need anything else put back in your car?' he asked. 'No, I don't think so' I replied. Fool.

So we head into the city to deliver the first order, easy one just have to pop it in her letterbox. The traffic was rubbish... it was after school time and had just started bucketing with rain. Took us ages to get there. Got out of the car, quickly stuffed the breastpads in said letterbox and then got back in the car. Greeted with the dreaded words 'mummy, I got poooooo'. I turned around to miss 2 and a half (almost) and said 'do you REALLY got poo?' she nods. Crap. The potty... it's not in the car, it's still in Chuq's car at his work. Deep breaths.

I turn back around... 'OK, can you hold on?' I toy briefly with the idea of putting one of the baby's nappies on her... it will fit but will it hold a full toddler wee? Doubtful.
More deep breaths. 'Ok, mummy will take you to the toilet, it will be a few minutes though'. After school traffic, bucketing rain... it takes about 20 minutes to drive about 1.5km and get into the carpark. Haul both kids out of the car and put little man in the stroller, little lady on her skateboard on the back (and doesn't she love that). Head down to the parenting room and get to the toilet... can't fit in with the stroller so just leave the door open. She sits up and hangs on... 'I don't got wee'. Deep breaths. 'You DO got wee, Mummy wasn't even coming into the city, we have stopped here just so you can do wee, please sit back up on the toilet and try'.
Success, thank goodness.

Whilst we are there I figure little boy should have his nappy changed too as he made some suspicious noises earlier. He doesn't disappoint either, full nappy. I manage to get poo on his feet, legs, change mat and overalls trying to clean it all off.
I look over at the couple sitting in the feeding area feeding their tiny newborn a bottle and wonder if we've amused them enough for one day. They would have heard every word in the toilet and also had my running commentary as I changed H's nappy. G asks if we can get that babycino (promised earlier) now, I tell her we'll see what we can do. I decide that we don't have time and promise her I'll make her one when we get home.

By the time we deliver the last of the nappies and get home, poor H is screaming his little head off probably from sheer hunger as it's been over 3 hours since his last feed. I'm a wreck from listening to my baby scream and not be able to do anything about it and am so glad to see our house so we can all bundle inside and I can feed him.

After we eat, G gets her babycino. I had a hot chocolate too, we both had a tic-toc (or two). I might keep the coffee machine out for a while :-)

This may end up being a bit of a rant, for that I am terribly sorry.... but where better to get it out than here ;)
Firstly I would like to get something out there...

yes, really. I am one of those parents, you know the ones that breastfeed their toddlers, bed share with their children, wears her babies around in slings rather than the sterile old pram, would never leave their precious babies to cry, so it goes on.

Anyone who knew me in my previous (and currently on-hold) life as a medical scientist would probably never believe it, but I just don't give a toss about all the 'rules'. Western cultures seem to be preoccupied with 'training' your babies to be what you want them to be or to be 'good' babies... babies are babies. They aren't capable of being 'bad'.
I am not going to reference anything... anyone who wants to do their own research on anything I will talk about here is more than welcome, but this is about ME and MY opinions... I have researched a lot of this stuff in order to come to my own conclusions and I encourage others to do the same.

So, let me address each of my hippy traits as mentioned above.

First the breastfeeding... well what a hot topic that has been of late. Let me put it this way. Women are given the tools to make the perfect food for their children. If correctly supported there are very few physiological reasons for this system to 'fail'. Most shortened breastfeeding relationships are due to poor advice or little/no support from the wider community. For goodness' sakes, a quarter of Australians think that it is inappropriate to feed a baby in public. If that isn't going to put a whole lot of people off I don't know what is.

Let me make it VERY clear that I do not, nor would I ever put down any mother who has resorted to feeding her baby with breastmilk subsitutes. Every parent makes the best decision that they can with the tools they have available to them.

My problem is that the tools aren't being made available. For me, I don't ever remember seeing breastfeeding as a child. Maybe I can vaguely remember my sister being fed once or twice early on but that's pretty hazy. Really the first exposure I had to breastfeeding was when my niece was born in 2003. My brother and his family live interstate, however, so my exposure was limited.
When my first beautiful child was born in 2007 I assumed that breastfeeding would just work.... wrong! We were both learning! It took 5 whole weeks to get her actually gaining weight but we persevered and I went on to feed her for 14 months and 6 days... 10 long months short of my ultimate goal but still many months longer than I thought possible at the very start. The things that saved my breastfeeding relationship with G were 1. finding the ABA Forum and 2. A wonderful child health nurse who has since retired.
My story is not uncommon, especially for first time mothers who do not have a lot of breastfeeding support around them. So why is it OK for people all around them to say 'oh, just put him/her on the bottle' but if I were to give someone suggestions to help them breastfeed I am labelled all sorts of nasty things.

A word of warning... if you can, avoid taking a 2 year old into a bed shop!
Yesterday we went shopping as a family to look for two new beds... our Queen sized bed just doesn't cut it for those times when there are 4 in the bed. In fact, even when there are only 3 of us (which is every night after Hamish wakes for the first time) our pillows migrate partially onto the bedside tables in order to make a safe space around H with no pillows or doona. We went along with two major requirements for a king sized bed.. reasonably low to the ground without any hazardous bits of bed frame sticking out to bang little heads on and drawers underneath. Guess what was looking at us when we walked in the door? We did do a lap of all of the big beds in the shop but none were as nice or as reasonably priced as the first nor met our requirements! Sold!

The second bed we were looking for was a king single for G. We wanted a king single for the times that one of us needs to hop in with her, or the times that our kids may want to hop in with each other in the night. This one just needed to be a nice looking frame and reasonably low to the ground. We found one fairly easily and without too much bed jumping by G. She did have a good play with the toys on the kids' beds which was fine.
The fun started when we had to pick mattresses... if Daddy was hopping on the beds, it was obviously fine for her too. The salesman appeared quite enamoured with her and she took an instant liking to him, running around and waving to him whilst cheekily jumping on beds (yelling 'no more monkeys hopping on the bed') and running through the store. The salesman was infinitely patient whilst one of us ran after her, even getting her a balloon and some stickers whilst I was looking at linen (of course we only have linen for single and queen beds). He did mention that he was expecting his first child in June so I guess he was thinking about what he had to look forward to.

Eventually we were able to make some decisions and handed over the credit card after he had knocked the price down a bit for buying two full beds and some linen and as we were about to leave he presented Miss G with a stuffed lion from one of the bed displays. Top Bloke :D (or just good salesman, but he seemed lovely)
So now, the cleanup begins. G's room is simple, move current bed out, put new bed in. Ours is somewhat more complicated... it has become something of a dumping ground for 'mess' from other rooms when we need to quickly 'tidy', so it will probably take us all week to get everything out and sorted, but there is nothing like a bit of pressure to make you tidy things up. Hopefully we won't just 'relocate' too much of it!

Well I can safely say that she will never be deficient in vitamin C! G would fight you to the death for a plate of grapes... She would be ecstatic if fruit was the only food she was allowed to eat. She can name every fruit in the supermarket except for some of the odd exotics and the only fruit I can think of off the top of my head that she doesn't like are mangoes... however next year she will probably love them!
We currently have a bag of plums and apricots in the bottom of the fridge that came from Mum & Dad's fruit trees (lucky as apricots cost a fortune!) and she is now tall enough to help herself... not sure how good this really is but at least she is toilet trained during the day so she's not going to be getting a red bum from sitting in fruit poo (sorry to all you non-parents but as you know, we parents can't have a conversation without mentioning poo).
We are also growing strawberries in pots on our back deck and one of the highlights of her day is checking to see if any are ready yet so that she can eat them (after she has helped to water them).
So, sitting in the highchair this evening after scraping most of the vegetables off her pizza and eating the base I give her a handful of blueberries and an apricot, she asks for a plum as well and I oblige. She then goes on to tell me that the blueberries are her friends.... ok then. At least they don't cry when you bite them, take your toys or compete with you for the attention of others.

We have had a lovely family day today... took the kids out to lunch at the Taste of Tasmania, G had a run around at the park on the way home. She is just the most beautiful child, smothers her 4 month old brother with love and affection... and then out of the blue she will pinch or slap him. She is usually a pretty good eater but refuses meat. Then one day (like today) she will pick all the chicken off a piece of pizza... to EAT it! She doesn't like to sleep during the day, but this afternoon on the way home she asked if she could go to sleep. When met with 'no darling, it's too late... when we get home we will eat tea and then you can go to sleep' tears followed. Toddlers are contradictions and extreme ends of the spectrum. One moment they will be adoring little angels, the next moment you just want to step aside and imagine that this raging devil couldn't possibly be your offspring. I put it down to the fact that they are learning... everything. They are totally egocentric and don't understand that the world isn't in existence to cater to their every whim... immediately! I am certain that she isn't malicious in hurting her brother, but rather wants to know what he will do if she pinches him. I recently read a quote on a forum which went something along the lines of 'you're not managing an inconvenience, you're raising a human being'. I wish I knew where it came from, maybe someone could enlighten me but I remind myself of that several times a day when she's doing something for the seventeenth time that I've asked her not to.