Diary of a one year old: 22 months

22 months. And all that’s on our minds is poop. There have been three nappy moments that led us to poo brain.

The first was a text from our lovely childminder last week.

“Out of interest,” she wrote. “Who dressed the child this morning?”

As I generally leave that onerous task to himself on Thursdays, I knew I was absolved of all fashion crimes. Still, cautiously, I text back, ‘Himself. Why?????’

Well she’d been sent down with no nappy on. And they’d taken a 60 mile round trip in the car before discovering the poor child was nappyless. Did she pee in her car seat? Nope. Dry as a bone. My piddling hero.

With glee, I text himself to tell him he wouldn’t be winning any parent of the year awards.

“I’m sure I put a nappy on her,” he wrote back. And this was promptly followed by, “Oh no wait. I’ve just found the nappy. It’s standing up by itself under the sitting room window.”

So the little miss had managed to swipe it off herself when the husband had left the room momentarily to go get her socks.

Was she trying to tell us something?

The second incident was not as pretty. Let’s just say a hunger striker would have been proud. Her dirty protest took place in her cot, one afternoon after her nap. And I’m still not quite over it.

Another sign that she may be ready for potty training?

Today, I joined her in the garden, where she was running round in her pajama babygro. I let her do this in the mornings, because it’ll be going in the wash anyways and the full body suit gives full sun protection. After giving her a snack, I sat down beside her and noticed an enormous bulge at the bottom of her leg.

“What the…” I said, as I prodded the lumpy package at her ankle. I thought she might have shoved a t-shirt down there, as she does have a tendency to go around with the babygro zip open Simon Cowell style. Shoving a t-shirt down there for the craic would be normal toddler behaviour, right?

No, yet again, it was the nappy, somehow removed, and her dragging it around like some sort of padded prosthesis.

So we bought a potty. It’s very pretty and white and has pictures of Elsa and Anna and Olaf all over it. She can literally pee on Elsa’s face, I mean how cool is that?

Will she look at it? No.

I put her sitting on it the other day and she leapt up onto the sofa. As I gently tried to coax her back, I noticed she was mid flow. On the sofa.

While lots of experts (my childminder, my mother) are saying she could be getting ready for training, I don’t feel she’s anywhere near there yet. Yes, she’s removing her nappy at every opportunity, but her language skills are so skimpy right now, I just don’t think she would have the capacity to tell us she needed to go.

It’s something I’ve been worried about and have talked about here before. While I’m not panicking, and I think she’s just a bit slow to talk, her understanding is very good and she can point at things and communicate with you quite well.

I’ve been reassured that she will be gabbling in no time and it’s all quite normal. Still, I’m looking forward to her two year old assessment with the public health nurse in two months, just for some professional guidance. If you go by what I’m reading on line, that they should have 20 words by 18 months and 50 words by two years old, then we ARE way behind. She has 14 right now, at 22 months.

So to help things along, I’ve started reading her lots of stories, pushing her on words and trying to get her to repeat them and we’ve bought flash cards and she loves grabbing them everyday and throwing them at us, while not saying ANY of the words.

Poop and speech apart, we are really enjoying her company right now. She’s great craic. She has a very sunny disposition and loves to laugh, so much so, that if she can’t get a real laugh out, a fake one will do.

I’d say she’s the best fake laugher in Ireland.

Her behaviour has vastly improved. We’ve gone back to restaurants. We can manage a half hour in a cafe now. And she’s quite content to sit in the buggy if we go for a longer stroll. Town is still challenging and I don’t tend to bring her down for long.

This weekend I’ll be heading off to Glastonbury (agh, scary, mud city) and so I’ll be leaving her in the capable hands of family. I am going to miss the crazy head of her. It’s something I’ve been dreading but seeing her during the week toddling off her with Nana no problem, I’m hoping that all will be fine.

If you follow us on Snapchat, you’ll be aware of the lipstick incidents. Sometimes I think putting them up makes me look like a bad parent. I’m sure people think, wow, LadyNicci must leave that child on her own for hours. Or… LadyNicci is just feeding that child lipsticks for the craic. Well, I could understand why you might think that.

I think, right now, we’re at lipstick massacre number seven. We’ve lost ruby red, burnt orange and pink supreme. We’ve had lipstick attacks in our bedroom, in the spare bedroom, in the hall and in the garden. And every single time, she has taken a lipstick from somewhere you might not think accessible by an almost two year old. In a make-up bag up high. In a hangbag up high. I do not leave them out for her, I swear.

Because she knows she’s not allowed them, you can be full sure, if there’s a deathly silence then she’s in lipstick meltdown mode. My error has been to not follow up with her straightaway. It’s in those three to four minutes that the damage is done. When there is sudden silence, run. Always, run.

So next month will be our final one year old update. Because the month after that, she’ll be entering the terrible twos!

Pray for us. Or rather, pray for my make-up bag. It doesn’t deserve it, really.