Year two has been easier and more interesting. Babies may be cute, but toddlers do stuff. Fun, weird, clever, adorable, annoying stuff. I call it an upgrade. And when your child finally starts talking with you, even if it’s just to tell you to go away so she can poop in peace, or to ask you for that one last extra piece of chocolate, well, it’s something else.
01.04.2015 / 02.04.2016
Here are some of the most important and formative firsts from Julia’s second year (dd.mm.yy):
- 01.04.15: First taste of chocolate. She loves it.
- 13.04.15: First taste of pizza. Mexicana with oregano. Meh.
- 19.04.15: Julia learns how to swipe on a Samsung Galaxy S4.
- 01.05.15: First taste of ice cream. Loves it.
- 06.07.15: Julia watches her first full piece of TV. Episode Snowed In from season 2 of Shaun the Sheep. She enjoys it and actually seems to get some of the comedy.
- 09.07.15: Julia realizes she can intentionally grab an object and throw it away from her. Loves it. Dad, not so much.
- 24.07.15: Julia starts to actually build with her Lego Duplos (as opposed to playing with individual pieces or, worse, dismantling awesome builds painstakingly constructed by mom or dad).
- 19.09.15: Possibly the first time Julia answers in the affirmative (“oo” for “joo”, “yes”). A refreshing change to the constant no’s.
- 21.10.15: Julia throws up over me for the very first time. Precious.
- 09.01.16: First sled ride.
- 23.01.16: First trip abroad and first time on an airplane. She flies like a pro.
- 29.03.16: Julia has pretty much figured out how to open the safety gate at the top of the stairs. Great.
Julia’s current interests:
- Singing (“Ihahaa”, “Laiva”, and “Bä, bä, vita lamm” are her bravuras)
- Climbing / Jumping / Running
- Breathlessly narrating important events from her day (adorable, if not always entirely coherent or comprehensible)
- Any shade of red, including pinks and violets (maybe it’s a phase)
- Mämmi
Next up: Uhmaikä.
* * *
Gimme a sec. I got this.
Chillin’ with dad.
Attitude.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Trust me. This is how I roll.
Should somebody like go after her?
Kråka!
Pure joy or an ice cream headache? Who cares, it’s ice cream!
I took all their weapons. Now what?
“Daddy’s little helper”? Are you kidding me? Who made you boss?
Still not sure about lighting muffins on fire. Also, that thing looks structurally unsound.
dreameling's 
Pure gold. And I believe that “Dad, not so much” (re: the throwing of things) encapsulates a whole world of frustration – and does so very nicely.
Our firstborn actively disliked pizza for a surprisingly long time. In fact, she only just realised (at 5-and-a-half) how wrong she was about pizza.
Indeed. But I guess you gotta let some throwing-of-objects take place unless you want to stunt the physical, cognitive, and emotional growth of your child, right?
I’m delighted to hear Wump discovered the truth about pizza. What you seem to have left unsaid is that Toop’s already a total pro with pizza? Julia’s mostly continued with her meh attitude towards it. She tried dipping a pepperoni pizza in berry soup, but that didn’t really help. (She licked the soup and left the pizza.)
That’s fantastic. I love to see the actions of a mind not bound down to social convention. How are they going to know something is good or bad unless they try it? And how are we to say something is good or bad (like berry soup pizza) if we haven’t tried it?
This was the exact logical fallacy we fell into with Wump. She’d declare that she didn’t want to eat something because it looked bad. We’d say “you have to try it before deciding if you like it or not”. She would then mix up some foul abomination with cheese and chocolate milk, and tell us we couldn’t decide until we’d tried it.
Actually tasted like a liquid cheesecake. Patent pending.
But as for Toop and the pizza, yeah, well. We have this added benefit now, called Anything Wump Does Is Divine Perfection From The Big Sister Goddess. So if Wump likes to eat pizza, then pizza is the only thing Toop has ever wanted in her life.
Wow, now I want pizza.
And to think that social conventions and cultural conformity will eventually get to them, too. We should probably try to fight that, at least to a reasonable degree — they do still need to live in this society.
For the record, the berry soup pizza was pretty good. As was the strawberry yogurt toast a few days back. Liquid cheesecake sounds divine.
I imagine the Anything Wump Does Is Divine Perfection From The Big Sister Goddess benefit has the added, um, benefit of Toop having completed potty training early and fast? Because I’m told that’s also a thing with siblings and I’m a little jealous. [1]
[1] To be absolutely clear, I’m potty-trained. It’s Julia who’s not. In fact, she’s actively resisting the training. My wife had a pretty good run at it when Julia was about 6-9 months, but then I took over for a couple of months, and then day care started, and all progress was lost.
Toop still likes to swear blue-eyed that she’s not shitting in her pants, and then shit in her pants, and then say “pottan.” Wump is of little help in this.
In her (and also Julia’s) defence, shitting in one’s pants is just so easy and efficient.