One of the things about having more than one child is that you have the chance to get a better feel for the rhythms and patterns of childhood the second time around. It takes, for example, a few times through the growth spurt cycle1 to realise what’s going on; the first time it happens with child #2, on the other hand, you know what’s happening immediately2.
Rosa is currently in a phase that is at once delightful and tinged with a certain shadow in the distance. The delight is that she is experimenting with her new-found ability to handle both social norms and complex sentence structure at the same time. This leads to such charming interactions as, for example, me showing her mother a picture of a bobcat and housecat making friends. From the chair behind me I heard the request, “May I please see?” And this is not atypical. I am more-or-less accompanied by a two foot tall Miss Manners.
Her face may be caked with snot, but her reaction is an imperturbable “May I have a tissue?”
Shat herself: “Daddy, may I go to the toilet?”
Wanting to scoff my breakfast: “May I have your weetbix3?”
Reaching for the forbidden fruit: “May Rosa have your coffee?”4
The shadow in the future is the Time Of School, whereupon her classmates will do their best to convince her that snatching is core life skill you’ll never grow out of, while concealing the process of mastication is the sort of effete snobbery that should be ridiculed out of you.
Alas, then, that this period is merely the time of maximum politeness. I shall enjoy it while I can.
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Your child has suddenly gone from a picky eater to a ravening ambulatory garbage can; after a week of this they abruptly fight over eating anything past three mouthfuls. Which wouldn’t be a problem except for the bit where you’ve gotten used to the idea that the only way to get through breakfast without your child eyeing up the cat speculatively is to prepare three adult meals. Two and three-quarters of which are now heaped forlornly in the scrap bucket. ↩︎
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Of course, this doesn’t help avoid the forlorn-scrap-bucket stage every time the ravening dies down. ↩︎
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Or whatever New World call their generic clone brand because fuck Sanitarium. ↩︎
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Referring to oneself by one’s own name apparently being the height of toddler formality. ↩︎