The Lessons of January

F is getting stroppier by the second. Her favourite words at the moment are:

• No! 
• Inte!
• Stop it!

And her least favourite things at the moment are:

• Not getting what she wants on demand
• Getting what she wants on demand
• Not knowing what she wants 

Last week was her birthday. The tally of tantrums got too many for me (F currently counts by saying "en, två, many" which is about right), but included such classics as her cousin V being offered some birthday cake, Daddy sitting next to her on the sofa and anybody looking at her new toy cars.

This is tiring. Ignoring the tantrums, which are at least mercifully short-lived on the whole, takes the shine off my otherwise cynically blackened sunny disposition. When your daughter is as likely to respond to an offer of play, food or attention with room-engulfing mood disintegrations, its hard to know what to do with your time.

We all have terrible colds on top of this. which hasn't helped. And it's either raining, snowing or the middle of the night in Gothenburg right now, adding seasonal cabin fever to the stew. Why on earth I think this is a good time to press ahead with potty training, I've no idea.

J: Would you like to sit on the potty?

F: No! Inte! Vill ha en bottle of milk!

J: That's not on offer right now.

(Mummy, who is in the bathroom getting ready for work, moves the potty a quarter of an inch with her foot as she moves past)

F: NOOOOOO! Det är min potty!

(Divers alarums)

V was doing the run-up to an opening night over the weekend, Dagis will not accept a child who is either febrile or was febrile yesterday, I've been at tantrum ground zero for five days. We tried combating the cough and fever with medicine. F has learned that medicine tastes vile and can be spat vigorously out. When I started coughing the day after, she nodded wisely and suggested I have some medicine for it.

As an aside, Dagis is getting on my wick at the moment. (This is not hard, all tantrums and no sleep make Wick a long chap, and it's hard to stay off him.) One of the teachers insists on speaking English to F although we've said we prefer them not to. Fair enough, F's Swinglish probably means that's needed. But having tasked us to weaned her off her dummy (about 90% done although she still sleeps with it) and in a rather patronising 'we know best' manner I might add, F seems to have it every time we pick her up. I don't know if this is mere testament to just how stroppy F is or whether they just need a kick in the pants, but there's a parent teacher night coming up soon and I'm looking forward to snarling all through it.

Anyway, after five days in a row of being home to take care of F and her hacking cough, I'm fairly rock-bottom-y. Back in class today, I fell asleep on the tram on the way in, whilst doing a writing exercise and then on the tram home. Snoozing before, during and after a lesson is not indicative of a ready-to-learn state.

Immediately afterwards, I picked F up and took her home and she helped me cook dinner. Egg fried rice with beef, which she was very excited about until I added her beloved plain rice to the wok, at which point she wanted a bottle of milk instead. Once I'd finished ignoring this volte face and eaten my food, I made the bottle of milk, at which point she got into bed and wanted a night night story instead. Once I'd got her into pyjamas, cleaned her face and teeth and read a book (twice) to her, she wanted to get up and play instead. Once I'd put her back to bed, turned out the light, sung to her and said goodnight, I got to listen to a steadily cresendo of "daddy daddy daddy" for an hour and half, culminating in a shriek, then a surprisingly polite and calm request for the bottle of milk again.

I mean, ever get the impression you're being played?

Taking Steps

"Right, okay, if you're not going to put your toys away, you can sit on this chair until you decide to behave." I think I probably threw a "young lady" in there somewhere for good measure, just in case I wasn't sounding enough like a huffy teacher.

F is generally pretty biddable, but had decided the collection of toy ketchup bottles she'd brought to the loo this morning was going to stay there unless I wanted to move them. When I disagreed, we had a battle of wills for the next hour. Fifteen minutes of screaming reduced me to trying the only parenting trick I know, which of course I learned from obnoxious junk TV.

Supernanny was actually on TLC earlier, bullying some grotesque American family for your entertainment. Look, the program (all programs ever on TLC, in fact) seems to say - your family isn't this insanely screwed up. So you must be good people and should feel good about yourselves. Stay tuned, Burkina Faso's Celebrity Next Top Wig Maker coming up next!

Seeing the show at least reminded me that I was doing the Naughty Step thing right, anyway. I wasn't convinced. Not least because we live in a flat and don't have any steps, the corner chair in Mummy and Daddy's room had to suffice. It was the most boring place I could find, although I did have to remove three Scandinavian-knit jumpers, a replica viking sword and a giant yoga ball from it first. What an interesting house we have.

F went through every classic manipulation she could find: -

• Telling Daddy to go and clear the toys away for her
• Turning entirely boneless with rage and sliding off the Chair like a paralyzed eel
• Stopping crying and until I came to look at her again, then picking up where she'd left off
• Getting off the Naughty Chair to play chess* when I wasn't looking
• Claiming she actually quite liked the Naughty Chair and was going to stay there indefinitely
• Playing with a nearby clock until it was removed (I didn't think of it as interesting enough to remove it in advance)

I left her to it for the most part. Which is hard. Basically, I don't really care about the toys. It's the principles at stake! I told you to do this one tiny thing, little daughter, and now I shall put us both through emotional hell until you concede I was right! It's for your own good! It certainly wasn't for mine, I'll tell you that. If F could see how much guilty remorse I was having to mask by hiding in the next room, anxiously Googling the authentic method of the Naughty Step, she'd have cracked me in minutes.

I went back in to try and start a reasonable conversation in the occasional lulls. Which would go fine until I reintroduced the whole sorry 'pick up your toys' thing, and then we'd be back to square one and redoubled weeping. But after a mere hour of fairly continuous wailing, she suddenly tried a new tack. Earnest smiles through the grubby tears:

"Feya be happy now, cuddle daddy."

"Oh good!" I said, and then suspiciously added "so will you pick up the toys?" because I wasn't born yesterday.

"Yes. Cuddle cuddle."

Maybe the day before yesterday. She'll have worked out how to beat this new parental ploy in a week or two, doubtless. But I'm chalking this round up to me.

*Her opening moves consist of throwing everything she can't get to work or doesn't like the look of off the board and then holding up the King and chanting his name proudly, which I believe is called George Osbourne's Gambit.

2014 Calendar

Happy New Year! Hope you had good ones. 

By way of a slightly late annual review, here is a selection of pictures of F doing F-type things all through 2014. She ages at a rate of about half a month per picture. I've got too much of a headcold (and too much post-Jul gastric sluggishness) to write more at the moment, but expect business as usual throughout the coming year.