Half the blogs I read seem to have a common theme at the moment (apart from the snow) – “help! My baby is becoming a toddler!”. Of course this is not so surprising as I tend to follow the blogs of women with children that are of similar ages to my own and these babies are now approaching their first birthday. But seriously, how did that happen so fast?

I’ve watched Kiran in the last couple of months picking up new skills and imitating us – he tries to put on shoes, answer the phone, brush his teeth, turn the tv on and use the touch-screen on my kindle. I want to scream “look what my baby’s doing!” but then I remember he’s not so little any more and all this stuff is totally normal of course – looking back in my archives I see Maya was doing similar things at the same age but I remember her being so grown up at one, a proper little toddler, but Kiran is still my baby damn it!

After taking those first few steps, he is still not walking at all really, as I predicted. He’s taken a few steps on a number of occasions either by accident or when we’ve tricked him (mean parents) but is in no hurry to start walking on his own. Well no actually, he is in a hurry – he wants us to walk him everywhere holding his hands and gets very frustrated if we won’t or if we don’t want to go in the direction he’s pulling us in. I get tired of following him around the compound after ten minutes and wish he would just hurry up and learn to walk already!

The frustration resulting from him wanting to walk shows up frequently in other situations too and turns into anger and full blown tantrums. I’m wondering where my laid back friendly boy went to. He’s not saying many words yet but is clear about getting across the message of what he wants. If we don’t comply he will throw himself on the floor and howl or jump up and down in frustration. He’s actually hit his head off the wall a few times which terrifies me! I really don’t remember Maya being this ’emotional’ as Made puts it – she was definitely having tantrums at this age but they were more funny than scary.

I’m starting to get a glimpse of what life will be like with two toddlers and I don’t think I like it! Peaceful days are rare at the moment as the fights over toys intensify, Maya pinches kiran for knocking over her block tower and he bites her when she takes a piece of play food off her.

It seems to be an impossible task keeping Kiran happy at the moment and he spends most of the day wingeing, howling and fussing. I’m sure things will get better once he learns to walk and I think he may be teething again too. The one surefire way to keep him smiling is put on this DVD of children’s songs – I got it for maya for xmas and she loves it too, dancing and singing along. But Kiran is truly obsessed. When he wakes up in the morning he crawls straight to the tv and starts bashing on the buttons until I come and turn it on. Last night he woke up at 1am and refused to go back to sleep until he’d watched it three times. I go to sleep with “the wheels on the bus” playing constantly in my head. Help!

There is trouble ahead, no doubt about it! Bring my baby back please?