the twinkle in my eye

this morning the twinkle and i went to piggywig’s birthday party and it was simply lovely. before we went to the party i had the twinkle hanging around in just a singlet for a while. i like to give her bum some nappy-free time and she seems to love clothes-free time. when it came time to put her party clothes on she had an almighty tantrum and tried to pull her cute dress off (orange with green ric-rac trim!). special k was actually proud of this behaviour because she thought it meant the twinkle didn’t want to wear a poxy dress, but even when we tried to put on her overalls she still went nuts. it was just clothes that she didn’t want. but after a cuddle with her blankie and a car ride with me singing go-betweens songs loudly (”a line in her letter, may 24… hey twinkle that’s your birthday, they’re singing about you!… so take your shoes and go outside, striiiiiiiide over stride…”) she was ready to eat party food and hang around kids. that photo is the tantrum pose, demonstrated whilst wearing clothes.

she’s a bit of a bloke, our twinkle. and i don’t just mean that she’s like a little boy because she walks around making car noises (brrrrrrmmmmmm) and likes to play with the sand digger at the playground. no, she’s like a big strapping bloke. today i was moving concrete chunks from one part of the garden to another and my little helper was lugging little pieces (big enough to need both her hands and all her strength) and then throwing them in the new pile. she was really serious and determined and proud about it. there was even this time when she skidded and tripped over and landed on her hands and knees on the cement path with her chunk of concrete between her hands. the only complaint she had was that her concrete chunk had broken! she got her first ever graze this morning at the park and i didn’t realise until we were leaving because she never made a fuss about it. (that’s a photo of her scrape – you can also see the pen marks from when she ‘wrote’ on piggywig’s card.) this evening she walked over to her ride-on car which was parked nose to the wall. instead of getting on it or pushing it into the right direction she picked the whole thing up with a huge grunt to get it into position. earlier, she went up behind our real car, bent her knees, put her two hands under the rear bumper and appeared to be trying to lift the whole car. and to top it all off, she often burps when she’s talking. so what’s the verdict? is she a burly bloke hidden in the body of a chicken-legged toddler?