Two - already last weekend. I did try and bake her a cake, but unlike a certain friend I have Scotland who seems to be able to construct magical unicorn cakes to rival the pinterest professionals I failed miserably to get something that was even worth taking a photo of.
I did learn two things from this experience. 1. Don’t let the ‘helping’ children distract you out of greasing the pan (they’re only there to lick the beaters and not actually help anyhow). 2. You do kinda need lollipop sticks to make cake pops. 3. Cake pops covered in chocolate and sprinkles barely counts as cake, but it is quite yummy.
But my youngest it now a toddling two year old and she is genuinely a lovely little girl to spend time with. She’s hilarious, with a giggle or a frown currently being her two favourite forms of communication. She isn’t exactly camera shy at the moment, but I find I have very few pictures of her smiling at the moment, for the second she sees my phone she either pouts or frowns at me - this must be the same at nursery as all the photos they send back at the moment are either the concentrating ‘this is a new and strange thing you are showing me’ frown that she shares with her favourite grandfather or the ‘why are the taking a picture’ pout. If you didn’t know her, or hadn’t seen her with her little pink backpack on running down the road and in through the nursery gate without so much as a backward glance or by your leave at her mother, you might think she didn’t enjoy herself there.
This year a sandpit landed in the gardens by way of a birthday present - fortunately she is reasonably good at sharing, although I can’t pretend there weren’t more than a few squabbles over the one remaining spade. I think hardier ones need to be purchased. A few other bits arrived in the post from family, but there were no visiting relatives. We have now completed the full total of children’s birthday parties that haven’t been because of corona. Cleo wouldn’t have had a big bash anyway, but we might have invited a few people over, rather than just waving a plate of chocolate covered cake pops over the garden wall at the neighbours. We've got a couple of months until the next birthday rolls around, hopefully this birthday is the last crummy one we'll have until they turn into sullky teenagers and don't want to hang out with their parents anyway.
The winner of the day were the new shoes. Lovely (not so very) new yellow shoes. These were my favourite of the shoes I bought for Sally when she was small and now Cleo has got her feet in them. Or her hands - if she wasn’t wearing them she was carrying them around with much glee.
Happy being two little one. Carry on bringing us joy with your happy smiles, your giggles and your enthusiasm for boops - not a typo, she just doesn’t say books quite right; she is spot on with her ability to curl up next to you and read a story. Carry on singing ‘twinkle twinkle’ in your lovely little voice and stealing things out of my hands with your tiny, delicate, pudgy fingers. But if you wanted to sleep through the night, I would be down with that.
Teenty tiny pigtails and a little frown.
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