Every day, a child learns something new: whether it's the correct spelling of a word, how to crawl, or that when Daddy says no he means no, their brain is like a sponge.
But, as any parent will tell you, the children are not the only ones learning something new. Parenting is full of surprises, new information, discoveries, which means that we learn almost as much on a daily basis as our children do.
For example: here are five things that I've learned about my children over the past week.
Babies can get hayfever.
For some reason, it had never occurred to me that all this pollen floating around could have an effect on a baby; that is, until my nine-month-old daughter started getting itchy eyes and blotchy skin whilst we were out and about in the sunshine.
A phone call from the doctor confirmed that she has the common allergy; the good news is that it's easily treatable through a 1ml dose of Piriton (only at night, as it makes her sleepy) along with simple preventative measures such as rubbing Vaseline around her nostrils to trap the grass pollen before it can have any effect.
Toddlers can do poos which look like dinosaurs.
This was the exclamation from my three-year-old son, Noah, after he had done his business on the potty (after first ordering me to get out of the room because he's NOT 'FISHISHED' YET). It seems this odd observation has actually helped the toilet training process, as now every time he needs a number two he rushes to the potty to see if he'll produce something akin to a creature from the Jurassic era. In fairness to him, it did look a bit like a dinosaur.
Children write weird things.
We recently bought Isaac, five, a desk for his bedroom (he's the academic type, you see). Now he spends most of his time writing studiously before rushing downstairs to brandish his latest work. His most recent creation was a list of instructions; what they were for, no-one knows, but in order to operate it you have to do the following: 'show the teacher', 'make it shine', 'sit with it' and 'think'.
Stopping my son from crying can be quite simple.
The other day Noah was crying, as infants often do - and, in what can only be described as a brainwave, I stuck my finger in his mouth. The shock of suddenly finding a finger in his gob combined with the ridiculousness of the whole situation turned crying to laughter in a matter of seconds. I'm yet to discover whether this method works on adults.
My daughter likes a bit of gangster rap.
I quite often sing to Jemima whilst I'm changing her nappy -as the rest of my family will tell you, no doubt whilst grimacing and holding their hands over their ears. The other day I decided to change tack a little and do a bit of rapping, which - without blowing my own trumpet - was pretty awesome. Turns out Jemima thought so too, if her incessant laughter, leg-waving and back-arching was anything to go by. Unless, of course, that's her way of asking me to stop.
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