Daniel is increasingly speaking in sentences. He finds the formulation “can I?” very useful. Can I look? Can I see it? Can I do it? He’s beginning to get to grips with grammar. Before when he needed help he would say “help you, help you” urgently. Now he says “help you me”. Since Christmas both he and Michael have learned to say “yes” and he has a particularly forceful and sibilant yes.
He loves dental floss and reaches a chubby arm for it the second he gets into the bathroom. He will pull out metres of it, if let. He loves getting his teeth flossed as well. I would like to put this on youtube for my dentist but I cannot. The second I pull out my camera, Daniel runs around to the back and says “can I see?” Remember waiting weeks to get photos and they were all the tops of people’s heads?
He does not seem to need much sleep. This is a matter of considerable regret to everyone; particularly Michael who shares a room with him and needs lots of sleep. Often of an evening, Daniel will be bellowing for room service (‘more milk woman, make it quick’) and Michael will be rocking in his cot moaning with his hands over his head.
Michael seems to be a born leader and Daniel is happy to follow him into whatever mischief he proposes.
A couple of weeks ago, Michael wore an underpants for the first time. He showed it proudly to Daniel and got a hug for his achievement. This was short-lived as he wet himself about 5 minutes later and we were disheartened and decided to hold toilet training for another day.
Michael is, according to the creche, ready to be toilet trained. At home this manifests itself as follows:
Me: Michael before you get into the bath, do you want to do a wee?
Michael: Yes, Michael the pot.
Michael sits on the pot. Nothing happens and I put him in the bath where he, invariably wees straight away.
Michael (gleefully): No the bath Michael, the pot!
Both of them are obsessed with sticks, Daniel particularly so and he likes to pick up a stout stick when we go out for walks and attack innocent saplings with it.
They are both counting, Daniel with rather more success than Michael – getting to 10 more or less (usually less 5 for some reason) and learning colours. This latter is proving more challenging and they constantly point to items and say a colour at random “red!” “no, sweetheart, that’s black”, “yes, black!”
They both spend a lot of time saying, “c’est qui ca?” which means (to them) who or what is that? Mr. Waffle found himself held up for several minutes outside the newsagents identifying Johnny Halliday, Carla Bruni and the like while Daniel pointed persistently at pictures saying the magic words. I was at home with Michael at the time confirming in response to repeated requests that each of the 16 bottles on the windowsill in the kitchen contained milk.
Our paediatrician says that we mustn’t compare; oh dear.