Toddler Tales: Milestones

Toddler Tales: Milestones Getty

While Diana has a big birthday coming up next month - two! - I celebrated my biggest birthday for almost a decade (I'm from New York, so 21 is a big deal) last week: 3-0.

I feel a lot of different emotions about turning 30. Sad, to be leaving my twenties behind. Scared, that I'm not really more functional or competent at anything now than I was 10 years ago; I just have a lot more expenses and a lot more responsibility. Uncertain - are mini-skirts and crazy-coloured hair still acceptable? When can I not do that any more?

But mostly, I feel relieved: I am glad to finally be a mum in her thirties.

Now, I realise age is just a number and I am not necessarily a better parent today than I was almost two years ago (although I really hope I am because I had absolutely no clue what I was doing then!), but living in London I have really felt that there weren't that many mothers my age going through pregnancy when I did (in NY, too - I was the first of my friends).

And that's normal for big cities - you only had to look at our nursery-cum-storage-space for one of the many reasons why - but I think being younger than the mum peers I met made me feel uncertain about my competency and abilities as a parent, certainly in D's earlier days and during my pregnancy. Now that I've mastered how to use an iPad as well as Diana, I'm confident that I have all of the tools of successful parenting at my disposal (Kidding. Sort of).

Of course, age isn't entirely to do with it. Part of the reason I felt insecure and frazzled as a twenties mum was that I was: far from planning our pregnancy, my now-husband and I were in the early stages of planning our wedding. We had just gotten a gorgeous but (very) naughty bulldog. We were supposed to be moving into a house we'd purchased and had fixed up, but not a place that was necessarily well-equipped for a baby (with our luck, it had more stairs than surface area). And instead of knowing what my career was, I barely had a job when I fell pregnant - I had just graduated from a master's programme and was basking in the post-dissertation glow of not really working but not really stressing out about it... yet.

And all of our friends were also in their 20s, so they were as clueless as we were. And their terrified expressions when we announced the news just mirrored how scared I was feeling about the whole thing.

But in many ways, while I could have been better prepared for having a baby - in terms of career, relationship, living space - not being able to think about it and plan it has been one of the best things to happen to me.

It meant that I've had to throw myself into everything - work, parenting, my relationship - full speed ahead. And I've loved (almost) every minute of it, despite feeling like I'm navigating uncertain territory the entire time.

And now that I'm 30, I'm sure my insecurities won't go away completely, but when I see my sparkling, smiling daughter, I can't help but think that unprepared as I was, I managed to do something right.

Although as I'm thinking this smugly to myself, my daughter is (unsteadily) trying to walk out of the room wearing my high heels...

My darling toddler, thank you for...

...saving me pennies on the phone bill
 Just imagine how many calls I might have made by now if the phone was EVER where it should be on its cradle! The telepathy thing isn't coming on that brilliantly, though, if I'm honest. Daddy never seems to receive the message 'bring more wine'.
...decorating the house
 You’re right. We really were very unimaginative when we painted it in shades of off white, hoping to achieve stylish spaces that exuded light and airiness. That big smear of chocolate you made by wiping your cheek on the wall in the living room actually matches the cushions! And should I ever enter the house and forget where the kitchen is, the line you drew with non-washable felt-tip the entire length of the wall in the hall will show me the way.
...boosting the local economy...
 ...by, for example, providing work for the exterminators, who come to catch the mice, who come to eat the food that you somehow manage to deposit, in minute amounts, all over the house in places that should be impossible to get to.
...the interesting beauty regimes
 I do remember reading that avocado is excellent for one's skin – although I’m not sure about your particular method of mixing it with snot, and transferring it from your face to mine with that expert lunge/sweep manoeuvre. Especially when I already have my make-up on.
...for helping me make new friends...
 ...such as the woman who answers calls for the emergency services.
...all the long weekends...
 ...which are always extended by several hours, what with your fascinating ability to wake up at 5am every Saturday and Sunday (or sometimes, amazingly enough, even earlier if it’s one of those rare occasions that I went out the night before).
â¦filling the silences in the house...
 ...with giggles, farts, excruciatingly high-pitched screams, the brain-numbing babble of battery toys and – rather brilliantly, even when you are sleeping soundly in your bed – a deafening roar when we turn on the stereo, which you have invariably switched on to maximum volume.
...not to mention the silences everywhere else...
 ...like in the library, for example, when we returned your story books and you were sad to see them go. I'm not sure, when the sweet librarian suggested you could take home a different Peppa Pig book, it was an entirely appropriate response to turn purple, scream bloody murder and repeatedly try to bite her. But still, she didn't call the police or anything.
...making my heart swell...
 ...not only with the love I have for you, but also with adrenaline – when I catch you on the third 'rung' of the bookshelf, because you have realised there's a valuable vase up at the top (possibly the only thing in the room you haven't yet licked).
... teaching me the true value of money
 I thought, what with frivolous purchases of Jimmy Choos and luxurious make-up having been replaced by cautious purchases of Start-Rites and Johnsons wipes, I had learned to appreciate it. But what really clinched it for me, I think, was looking up just as you posted that £20 note through the minuscule gap between the wall and the fireplace.
...helping me garden
 I understand that waiting for those tomatoes to turn red is just too much for you. Never mind. After months of tending those plants (which I grew from seed by the way, do you remember?), rather than plucking ripe juicy tomatoes for glorious summer salads, I will just look up recipes for green tomato chutneys which will take up space in the cupboard for all eternity – or until we move house.
...being so honest
 Like when you pointed at my thighs, laughing, and said: 'jelly!' it was a turning point for me. Really.
...being right next to me when I woke up this morning
 The fact that you prised open my sleepy eyelid, and then tried to lick my eyeball, is by the by. Even if not quite THAT close up, just like every other morning of my life, you were still the very first thing I wanted to see.