Usurper is suffering from second child syndrome and is missing out on all those things that were such a big deal for Little Miss.

The latest is that she turns 1 on Wednesday (well done to her for surviving), but unlike for Little Miss there is to be no elaborate gathering.

This is not entirely our fault. For a start in a sure sign that the grandparents are now getting old and feeble (as opposed to just feeble), Nanny has taken a tumble and is unable to travel for a little bit. I keep telling her that at her age she is lucky that it isn’t a broken hip, but not to fear that the is a vacancy at the “Independent living accommodation for the elderly” facility up the road.

Apparently I am an annoying little sh*t of a child and should just bugger off.

So what was meant to be party day complete with presents and cakes and all fun that entails is now just a trip up to the local cafe with Pa in tow. (Pa is as big of a sh*t as I am apparently and has left Nanny behind and flown up for the day anyway).

And I think Usurper may have cottoned on to the fact that she is being dudded, babies are clever that way. She is currently registering her displeasure in the following manner:
1. She is now back to refusing to walk more than 1 step at a time. Since the fateful night of the 16 steps she has hardly even walked and all.

2. She is currently on a very tight schedule of not sleeping. Her current night routine is bed at 7pm, wake at 10:30pm for feed, wake at 1:30am for sook / feed, wake at 5am for sook / feed. Except for last night where she didn’t actually sleep between 11pm and 1:30am at all. It’s a lot of fun to have a 1 year old baby that refuses to sleep through the night no matter what.

I guess on the upside there is little chance I will miss the 6:25am train in the near future.

Oh well, off to the cafe and then back home for presents - I hop they are the kind that make a lot of noise.

Finally I am seeing signs that Little Miss actually is my child. After years of secretly questioning Wife’s fidelity I am now convinced she is mine. Sure she still has Wife’s looks (thank god), brains (even better), not to mention her temperament, but finally she is showing some signs from her less dominate genealogy.

I came in last night to find her an inch from he TV screen her grotty little paws all over it’s beautiful LCD screen. I resisted the urge to drop kick her across the lounge room and remembered that being a parent involves both good and bad.

So calmly I wandered over to her and asked in my most restrained voice “What the hell do you think you are doing!!!????!!!”

She looked at me, a longing almost melancholy glint in her eye and lilt in her voice, “I loovveeee the Night Garden Daddy, I want to go there and meet Iggle Piggle and Makka Pakka and play with them.”

Apparently she had convinced herself that she could climb into the television and be transported to the magical world contained within.

If only it were true, ahhh the places I would go …………..

When will Usurper actually take that first stuttering step towards the ultimate in freedom - bipedal movement? She is close, very very close. She will at times stand up and let go of whatever she is holding onto, standing there grinning and giggling like a maniac until she falls to her ass - at which time she giggles even more.

She has also taken the odd one step shuffle, but I don’t think it counts until she has moved both feet one after another.

The thing I am looking forward too when she is finally fully mobile is the absolute terror she is going to rain down on the world around her. There is nothing surer than she is going go be a climber, a bolter, a madwoman on two legs. The monkey backpack harness is going to get quite the working over in the next few months.

I do feel sorry for Little Miss though, because once the baby is the toddler then the former toddler is going to have to be very careful - I can see revenge for all the times she has been pushed around in the past.

P.S. - Sorry for the lack of posts, but as you may have known if you read Wife’s blog our house has been full of pestilence and plague of late, (and spiders) - I promise to be better in the future

One of the things I find most endearing about Little Miss is the complete honesty in what she says. Obviously she does lie, or more accurately she doesn’t answer a question, if you ask her why Usurper is crying she will say something like “welllll………… my shoe was a bit wobbly….” a complete non sequitor that after a while of dealing with her you can translate as follows:
Wellll = I’m trying to think of my justification don’t rush me
my shoe was a bit wobbly = I was trying to use the baby as a pommel horse, I slipped and landed on her head knocking off a couple of IQ points, but it wasn’t because I was being naughty and doing something I have been told again and again not to do, the problem was obviously that my shoe was wobbly causing me to lose my balance. Hence it is not my fault, but the cheap dodgy shoes you have bought be because you are a bad parent and don’t love me enough to get me good brand name shoes.

And I can assure you the reason I was given yesterday for a crying baby was indeed that Little Miss had a wobbly shoe, the translation though is my own.

As I so often do I have digressed at right angles to my original point, which is that I love the way that the toddler will tell the unadulterated truth. Hmmm, given I have just been telling you about how she lies to avoid blame I think a better way of saying it is I love how there is often no filter between what they are thinking and what they say.

In the last couple of days Little Miss has come out with some beauties, such as:
“What happened there?”, when pointing out the wrinkles around Nanna’s eyes.
“Did you brush your teeth, they are looking a bit manky (local slang for dirty)”
“I don’t like xyzrelative, they scare me”
“I don’t like xyzrelative, they are always crying”
“Dad, where did all your hair go” - I should point out this was said prior to my shaving my head
“Dad, you are a bad singer and a bad dancer, I don’t want you in my band anymore - sit down!”
“Nana, when we visit Nanny we go to Melbourne, she’s my favorite!”
“Nanny, I don’t think I love you much any more”

You get the picture, she just says what ever it is she is thinking with scant regard for how it may be taken by the recipient of the information. There is obviously no malice involved it is just her passing along what is obviously the truth as she sees it and as we all know we teach out kids not to lie so there is no reason to get all uptight about it.

Of course once our kids have mastered telling the truth we will spend the next few years teaching them how to lie in a socially acceptable way. And to us a socially acceptable way is to tell us the truth to any question we ask, whether or not it will get them in trouble, while remembering to lie in almost any social situation so as not to embarrass or hurt the feelings of those around them - even if that lie is obvious.

No wonder our kids get confused.

Hmmm, I think I will see if the toddlers approach would work in the adult world. I might spend the day just telling the unadulterated truth to those around me - “Well, we haven’t got the results you were after from the campaign because your message was garbage, your communication strategy was non existent, your written statements were barely literate and you personally have all the charisma of one of my daughters used nappies”, should do wonders for the career.

Wife has been sick for the last little while and the baby Usurper has also been a bit crook (and has also been getting the odd new tooth), so to try and give them a bit of a break I spent a fair chunk of today out and about at a market and then some shops with Little Miss.

We had a pretty good day, we played at a park, ate a yummy cupcake, saw some friends of hers and were largely tantrum free while out.

The one things that did strike me was just how wonderful your kids can make you feel. A simple hug, and ‘I love you Dad’, or ‘I had a good day today’ and your hearts melts. They can an do give you some much pleasure and happiness.

Although as you can guess from the title, what they giveth they can also taketh away.

Today on the way home in the car we were having a chat about life in general and singing along to a song called, ironically as it turns out, I like to sing.

As we pulled into the driveway at home the following came from the back seat:

‘I had a lot of fun today!’ warm fuzzy feeling washes over me.

Then without a pause, ‘Don’t sing Dad, you’re a bad singer’, which despite all those years spent in a band doesn’t bother me because it is a fair cop. Then the killer.

‘You’re really old Dad, and you’ve got no hair, and you’re a really really bad singer’.

Talk about being shot down from those closest too you. The worse bit is that I know that it wasn’t said with any malice at all, or even as a subtle dig, toddlers just aren’t that sophisticated - it was just a statement of fact, pure, simple, honest, and ever sooooooooooooo devastating. Then again maybe I am fragile and approaching my 40th birthday midlife crisis……….