Hi everyone, I'm Amy and I usually blog over at Cooking, Cakes and Children. Firstly I'd like to say a huge thank you to Emma for asking me to write a guest post for her - my first guest post ever!
I guess you'll all have heard of the term terrible twos? It is something very close to my heart at the moment as I have a two year old daughter, Faith. To be fair, she hasn't just limited herself to terrible twos, we've been experiencing all the joys of tantrums since she was very young and it shows no signs of stopping just yet!
I had to chuckle to myself last week as I was reading through a list of names, which was the result of a survey to find the most troublesome toddler names. I was amused and rather surprised to find the name Faith listed as number 4. I didn't think that Faith was a particularly common name, certainly in the lower half of the most popular girls names, so this tells me that pretty much every toddler called Faith must be a handful! This is also good in a way - perhaps her stubborn, frustrating, infuriating behaviour is just purely down to her name? Maybe I chose badly?!
When other people look at Faith the first response it usually "Isn't she cute?". No, she isn't! Not when you have to spend all day with her! For example, this morning started at 6:30am with Faith rolling around on the kitchen floor for around 15 minutes shouting repeatedly "I want a snack, I want a snack!". She wouldn't even entertain the idea of breakfast. After this time she suddenly switched to shouting "I want breakfast!" and looked at me as if I hadn't even offered this option previously. Disaster eventually averted.
Next we went for a walk into town. She wanted the buggy, which she rode in all the way. Result! But oh no, the minute we get into the busy shopping centre she wants to walk. As I'm sure is the case with all other parents, I am acutely aware of potential catalysts to tantrums in the local environment. I tried, and failed, to steer a path well clear of the Thomas the Tank Engine ride on toy so yet another full on, roll on the floor tantrum ensued. The little old ladies around us smiled at her and gave me the evil eye as I started to walk away. But this isn't a successful tactic with Faith. When Grace, now 5, was little she wouldn't let me out of her sight. Faith will quite happily sit there while I walk away and I'm sure if I disappeared around the corner she wouldn't really care! Eventually she got up, smiled and got back in the buggy.
However, I don't want to scare you all off toddlers as it's not all bad! I cherish the look on her little face when I pick her up from nursery and she squeezes my face and clings onto my neck so tightly. I melt when she calls down the stairs after we've put her to bed "I love you Mummy", and all the tantrums are forgotten.