And then she shoved both fingers up her nose and walked around talking nonsense to herself

For those of you living under a rock, I’d just like to point out that I’m doing NaNoWriMo. And let me tell you, it’s a WHOLE DIFFERENT BALL GAME with a toddler hanging around.

Last year Evie was only 3 months old and she slept pretty much all the time. Health issues will do that to a baby. This year, she’s fifteen months old and chaos walking. Poor Amy is doing her best to keep her room clean, but Evie’s favourite game is throw everything out of every shelf everywhere, and also let’s throw all these clothes on the floor and make clothing angels, and maybe I’ll pull all the blankets off your bed while I’m at it, and can I eat that? It looks tasty. I’m going to eat it.

And before you suggest a door, we’ve got one and she knows how to work it.

I’ve already had an entire book of notes shredded and eaten. Luckily I got a brand new shiny red notebook for my birthday so I transcribed as much as I can and WOW, LET ME TELL YOU, the baby eats a lot of paper. Like, A LOT.

She’s a funny little thing. She went nearly three weeks without eating a scrap of solid food. Nothing. NADA ZIP ZILCH GIVE ME BOOBS MILKLADY.

And then she choked on NOTHING, and puked everywhere. And I mean EVERYWHERE. And it was all snot and mucus and grossness and disgusting, and I caught it with my hands to stop it going on the floor, but it overflowed anyway and it was bad. I am not paid enough for this vomit catching gig.

But like magic, she started eating again, and has since been ingesting at least one bowlful of food a day, as well as half a notebook as often as she can, various appointment cards, artworks and the middle bits of apples, but not the skin.

Like I said. Funny little thing.

Toddlerhood is chaos. How had I forgotten this bit?

Yesterday I dished up ice-cream after dinner, because I can, and because when you have a toddler who is funny about food, all calories are good calories, and especially ice-cream because it’s full of dairy and fat, which are good.

Anyway, I sat down to share it with Evelyn, who looked at me with giant limpid eyes, before defiantly pointing at my ice-cream, and then at her mouth. SLOW DOWN KID, I’m getting to it, LOOK HERE IT IS IN YOUR MOUTH.

She made a contented noise and let me feed her all my ice-cream.

So she doesn’t talk, but man, she let’s her feelings be known. You see that thing? Yeah, put it right here in my face hole right here and what do you mean you’re not sharing, of course you’re sharing, make with the ice-cream lady.

I was going to write an intelligent piece right here about linkbait articles and how if I see another “these five photos will make you want to buy a puppy and dress it up in hats and throw a party” or “humans are killing the world and here’s how you’re a horrible person who deserves to be flayed to death because POLYSTYRENE”, but huh, turns out all my brain can manage right now is a whole bunch of run on sentences.

You’re welcome internet.

FLIPSIDE: I hit 25 thousand words last night. TAKE THAT HATERS.