Ted Talks! As in, he’s properly stringing together sentences and chattering away, which means we’re at that very weird turning point where you begin to forget that your child was ever a gurgling baby. (Sorry if you thought I was about to announce a Ted Talk coup; not happening. I don’t know what an earth I’d bang on about, to be quite honest. I’ve spent the last few months untangling undecipherable information about things like private servers, CMS and Firebase (still don’t even know what this is) and it’s all devastatingly dull.)
Anyway, I’m not sure I noticed this “just chattering” stage with Angelica, not so acutely anyway, because it happened quite a bit earlier and I was in full-on survival mode with a new baby and a toddler. So this time I’m savouring every little new word, every funny turn of phrase, every mix-up and mispronunciation. Racing car is the most-practised phrase, has been for a month or so, ever since we went off to a wedding in France and my sister-in-law spent the entire four days repeating those words. It’s like it’s embedded in his mind, seared on. Wherever we go he sees racing cars, whether it’s Sainsbury’s carpark or the zoo. All cars count, by the way – even the ones that aren’t remotely racy.
But hallelujah! No longer do I have to try and decipher the wails – you know when toddlers want to communicate but simply can’t" And they ...