the twinkle in my eye

on saturday the twinkle took her first few unaided steps. each day since then she’s taken three or four steps then giggled and fallen over. good for her! here she is right before she took those steps:

cute and quirky things she does:

• picks up a hair brush (usually by the wrong end) and strokes the back of her head with it.
• stands up screaming in her cot at bed time – then when we enter her room she dives down face-down and pretends she’s asleep.
• pretends she has strange clothing preferences when she’s at the baby factory, which she doesn’t have at home – eg taking her pants off all day at childcare, or insisting on wearing her woollen hat to bed at childcare.

we still haven’t had heaps of time to get to know our new neighbourhood but today is a bit of a chance for the twinkle and me. this morning i noticed that a lot of older women around here wear green and gold tracksuits. i’ve seriously seen three walk past our house this morning alone. the reasons i have considered are:

• it’s the uniform for the local lawn bowls club (haven’t actually seen this club)
• they’re on special at dimmey’s
• the local laydeez are getting in the olympic spirit.

can anyone shed any light on this for me?

today on our adventures down main street, i found an organic grocer. cool! i bought organic corn chips for the twinkle because last night we resorted to feeding her d0rit0s in the car to stop her from screaming. sometimes it’s a whole world of bad parenting at our house. i also bought a $2 tin lunch box at dimmey’s and a $1.59 singlet with the enigmatic phrase “me too” embroidered in pride-style rainbow cotton. us western suburbs folk love dimmeys and forges. i bought 50c brand new leg warmers for the twinkle from vinnies.

then i bought a $2 plastic potty at the salvos.

it’s not that we’re planning to toilet train her before she can even walk – we’re not that clever (unlike some other parents i know!). but every night in the bathroom before her bath when we take off her nappy she does a wee on the bath mat. so i’m planning to whack her on the potty as soon as we take the nappy off tonight and see how that goes. better than washing the bath mat every day. (the other night i had already undressed her and was undressing myself to get in the bath with her. i looked down and saw her do a little wee on the tiles then kneel down and play in it with her hands. so charming.)

when we got home and i was unpacking the shopping i saw the twinkle pull her poo-face, so i grabbed the potty, ripped her clothes off and whacked her on the potty. it was too late. poo and wee were everywhere except in the potty. i might just stick to the pre-bath wee for now.

oh, and the other thing i found down in main street was a display of some historic photos, including some family shots of people in houses in our street with the train line behind them. i want to look into this a bit more and figure out if any of those people belonged to our house.