I had to feel sorry for poor Broccoli the other night. My daughter (twenty months old) ate cauliflower-broccoli-pancetta mac ‘n’ cheese for dinner; she gobbled it down but not so haphazardly that she failed to delicately remove delicious Broccoli and place Him on the side of her plate.

It was not the first time my little lovely has eaten Broccoli but probably the first time that He has been so… obvious in her meal. I found it highly amusing that she pretty much has no idea what Broccoli tastes like but found Him suspicious anyway. Cauliflower did not receive the same treatment, most likely because He blended quite nicely into the cheesy macaroni sauce, but poor Broccoli was pronounced guilty with no trial. Not very democratic.

Amused as I was, I expect my child to eat her vegetables and the ‘no biscuit unless you finish your dinner’ worked a charm. Broccoli was gobbled and swallowed - when my stubborn child doesn’t like something but is made to eat it regardless, in a battle of wills she has a tendency to keep it in her mouth and NOT swallow (having learnt the lesson that spitting out food is unacceptable); she once kept a piece of half-chewed chicken in her mouth for fifteen minutes before eventually swallowing it only when distracted by an offer to play in the garden; so swallowing the broccoli was a big deal!

The signs are clear, dear Broccoli, Amelia will learn how yummy you are – she has stubborn parents after all.

My little girl doesn’t like Mondays. After a weekend full of daddy time, and undivided mommy attention, Monday just sucks – daddy cycles off to work and mommy’s eyes are glued to her writing tasks.

Poor Amelia… poor mommy.

Grumpy Mondays are composed of various antics aimed at drawing my attention away from my work. When Amelia’s look-at-me-mommy shrieks and now-mommy-now wails are ignored, my person becomes a jungle gym and my lap a springboard – it’s sort of hard to ignore the human chimp that is my daughter.

I politely tell my princess that ‘mommy needs to work and Amelia needs to play’ – usually once is enough but not on Mondays. My command-in-the-form-of-a-request is met with melodramatic gesticulations – the little hands go up to the face and with head on arm my sweet one drops to the floor in anguish as her life slowly but surely comes to an end.

A firm tone and lots of cuddles get my baby through the day. And then it’s Tuesday… and being the owner of working parents is not as terrible as yesterday.

The V&A Museum of Childhood is hosting an exhibition From The Tiger Who Came to Tea to Mog and Pink Rabbit, which runs from 28 May – 2 September 2011. The exhibition offers a retrospective of Judith Kerr, whose vast body of work includes the popular Mog series and The Tiger Who Came to Tea, as well as her autobiographical novel When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit, which charts her childhood fleeing Hitler’s Germany in 1933 with her family.

… which is all quite fabulous but what BrazenMom are really interested in is the exciting range of products produced in conjunction with the exhibition, from masks and stickers for children to enjoy to mounted prints to be hung on the wall, greeting cards and tiger tea and biscuits.

See below for some of the funky stuff on offer:

Kids Tiger Mittens

Tiger Umbrella

Tiger Food Toffee & Fudge Biscuits

The Tiger Who Came to Tea – Mounted Print

Knitted Tiger

Tiger Torch

Mog Paper Mask

For more info on the exhibition, CLICK HERE.

Nature can be fearsome; tsunamis, hurricanes, cyclones, volcanoes, earthquakes… rustling leaves.

The gurus of all things mommy say that sometimes children have strange phobias and that parents should never mock or belittle their children if they develop a fear of something… well, something random I guess.

I agree. Is it okay if we mock them behind their backs? I’ll say ‘yes’ for the sake of my story and make sure that my nineteen-month-old daughter only reads it when she has developed a sense of humour.

It all started on the day that my hubby threw a pile of dead, autumn leaves on the head of my baby girl. So perhaps her strange fear is not completely irrational. Fear can be predominantly subjective after all. And I also like to play ‘blame the dad’ sometimes. Anyway, Amelia used to be afraid to walk on, next to or near any pile of leaves. She got over that. Now she is not so keen on leaves attached to trees and bushes but only when the wind blows and the leaves rustle.

When out in the garden today it took the greatest amount of cajoling to convince my daughter to walk past a noisy rose bush that relaxed peacefully in the flower bed next to Amelia’s chosen path – there was no way it could have touched her. I chuckled to myself as I observed the manifestations of an inner struggle reflected on the face of my sweet one.

I am proud to say that she did the brave thing: walked past the rose bush all by herself! Demon flowers and all!

At such a young age my Amelia has come into contact with one of Life’s most essential lessons: the mental requirements necessary to overcome fear. Practice makes perfect. And another lesson (albeit somewhat abstract)…

… that Nature should be respected. Perhaps it is my daughter’s innocence that opens her mind to the importance of this fact. She exists in a time before Innocence is choked and stifled by the aged hands Arrogance and replaced with Compromise and Comprehension.

At the tender age of toddler, Amelia is afforded the precious gift of looking on the world with untainted eyes. How lovely.

James Joyce, Mark Twain, Virginia Woolf, T.S. Eliot, Mary Shelly, Leo Tolstoy and Oscar Wilde.

THINK… think of a time when both war and peace abound; a time when Dorian Gray meets with Frankenstein and Huckleberry Finn under a lighthouse to discuss the portrait of an artist as a young man whilst listening to the Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock…

Such a time is bullsh*t… or perhaps the makings of an M. Night Shyamalan horror film… thing.

But seriously, the aforementioned authors and poets do have something in common (other than the obvious) – although famous for some of literature’s most brilliant adult word art, they are also writers of some pretty interesting children’s fiction.

In a fab article entitled 7 Obscure Children’s Books by Authors of Grown-Up Literature, Maria Popova introduces little-known children’s books by beloved authors of literature for grown-ups.

If you’re a lover of all things literary, be sure to read Maria’s article. In the meantime, to whet your appetite, check out these awesome pics:

The Cat and the Devil (James Joyce)

Advice to little girls (Mark Twain)

The Widow and the Parrot (Virginia
Woolf)

Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats (T.S Eliot)

Maurice, or The Fisher’s Cot (Mary Shelley)

Classic Tales and Fables for Children (Leo Tolstoy)

The Happy Prince and other Tales (Oscar Wilde)

My little girl loves animals, animals and insects (flies included), but the ones that go ‘quack quack’ are particularly cool.

I took my cheeky-chops to Hyde Park the other day to hang out with the ducks and swing some delicious bread their way. She had a ball and showed no fear when a rather large ducky came her way ready to peck the bread right out of her hand. Said bread was hurriedly plucked from said toddler’s hand and tossed into the lake where said duck took a rather voracious dive.

When Amelia wondered off on one of her man-on-a-mission tangents (instigated by the site of a puddle that was calling to be splashed in), I took it as a tacit sign that she was over the ducks.

Many puddles later, we discovered a herd of pigeons – yes, a herd. I took out the bread and began throwing… and stood agape as I watched my eighteen-month-old princess picking up the little pieces of bread from the grass and popping them into her mouth. The thought of germs and bugs didn’t even enter my consciousness – my daughter was depriving the poor pigeons of their lunch. I informed Amelia of this fact but she did not share my sentiment and carried on gobbling with reckless abandon. What can I say…

…you snooze, you lose.

My little girl can say please. Well… ‘peas’, if we’re going to get technical. Amelia’s daddy and I, with the help of Persistent Repetition, have taught my 18-month-old sweetheart that if she would like something, “please” is the word. She also ‘signs’ please by bringing her little hands up to her chest in a beautiful gesture of all things polite.

We started by asking her to say “please” when she gets a treat after lunch or dinner. And after a couple of days she had cottoned on to the concept… almost too well. I am now faced with the Beast of Please also known as ‘Peas’, whose best friend is Unparalleled Sweetness.

My darling Amelia brings me a toy saying “peas, peas, peas” – a toy that has no buttons, no complicated switches, nothing to turn… and I am utterly befuddled. What am I to do with so polite a request and so obvious a toy? Desperate not to disappoint and discourage the pleas of ‘peas’ I make up some ridiculous game to distract the unfathomable intent of the questioner, and my child seems happy. Until…

… until, the Beast rises again. In strolls Amelia, carrying two pairs of tights, a hoodie and three shirts, begging “peas, peas, peas.” This time I am not confused. She wants to wear all of the above. I try to rationalise by telling my little lovely that her tiny person cannot possibly accommodate so much clothing. Reason shmeason. I end up dressing her teddies, which seems to compensate for and appease the ‘peas.’

Then there is the dreaded I-would-like-to-wash-myself-in-copious-amounts-of-soap “peas, peas, peas” and the I-would-like-you-to-spend-all-morning-making-my-dollies-dance-to-Disney-classics “peas, peas, peas”, which are never as bad as the point-randomly-in-any-direction “peas, peas, peas” or the may-I-play-with-mommy’s-very-expensive-Venetian-masks-all-the-way-from-Venice “peas, peas, peas” – both of which cannot be satiated.

The… Beast.. of… Please… is… wearing…me…down! It’s cuteness is heart-breakingly, unashamedly precious!

After the euphoria involved in the joy of bringing my daughter one step closer to social propriety, lesson number two in ‘correct social conduct’ is that ‘peas’ is not in fact a magic word that grants all wishes. Following which, is lesson number three; this unfair state of being need not be acknowledged with unearthly screeches and bouts of melancholia. Life’s ambiguity is a tough lesson for a toddler…

…for anyone.

Dear Diary, I need to pick your brain. Desperately.

So here’s the deal: in November we’re hauling our asses on a plane to South Africa to visit family and friends. It’s a 12-ish hour stop-over flight that travels overnight. And I can think of nothing more unpleasant.

Seriously.

I prefer the thought of gouging my eye with a blunt knife (even a spoon) to imagining the tedious horror of keeping my daughter occupied for the flight’s duration. “She’ll sleep” you tell me, “HA HA” I tell you.

Amelia is no stranger to travel. She’s been to Italy, Holland and Portugal but 12 hours is quite different to three hours. On our most recent trip to Portugal, my little lovely was a picture perfect angel on the way there but on the way back… on the way back Chucky took over. AND CHUCKY IS HORRIBLE.

Would it be wrong to shoot my child with a tranquiliser dart if I promise to do it at close range?  Just kidding – don’t call the cops on me.  But, seriously speaking, if you have any ideas an anything natural that will knock a child out for say 12 hours, dear diary, sharing is caring!

My 18-month-old daughter has fallen in love with a wooden flower. Last night, as I was reading Amelia a bedtime story, she sat happily in my lap, cradling her beloved orange tulip as she listened to the tale.

The first thing Amelia does when she wakes up in the morning is hunt for her flower. When Flower is unearthed from the rubble under which it is frequently buried, Amelia brings Flower to me for a quick sniff. Whilst extremely proud that my daughter understands that flowers smell pretty, sniffing a wooden flower again and again , other than utterly bizarre, becomes a tad… tedious.

My Amelia has translated the signs of love, ‘kisses and cuddles’ to kisses and head-butts (don’t ask because I have no answer). These most precious of gestures are reserved for items of great worth; food, teddies, pictures in books (especially pictures of teddies, which are rewarded with lovely kisses), other children, sometimes her parents and definitely her uncle – pretty much anything for which she feels great fondness – and Flower has received many a kiss and a cuddle.

Perhaps I am raising a horticulturalist? Or more likely a ‘tree-hugger’…

A children’s book for grown-ups

Let’s not kid; sleep deprivation is hellish. One of the sacrifices demanded by parenthood is the pleasure of a good night’s sleep. Whether it’s midnight feedings, distressed cries or the worry of late night escapades, our children plan on keeping us awake for a good 18 years, and probably long after.

With this in mind, California Book Award-winning author Adam Mansbach has written a foul-mouthed, tongue-in-cheek bedtime book for parents who live in the real world. Go the Fuck to Sleep tells it like it is; that a few snoozing kitties and cutesy rhymes don’t always send a toddler sailing blissfully off to dreamland. Here’s an excerpt:

The eagles who soar through the sky are at rest
And the creatures who crawl, run and creep.
I know you’re not thirsty. That’s bullshit. Stop lying.
Lie the fuck down, my darling, and sleep.

The cubs and the lions are snoring,
Wrapped in a big snuggly heap.
How come you can do all this other great shit
But you can’t lie the fuck down and sleep?

The book has been describes as “profane, affectionate, and radically honest… Adam Mansbach’s verses perfectly capture the familiar – and unspoken – tribulations of putting your little angel down for the night. In the process, they open up a conversation about parenting, granting us permission to admit our frustrations, and laugh at their absurdity.”

I’m all about keepin’ it real: on more occasions than I care to admit I have mouthed the title of Adam’s book, as a drag myself up and out of bed to tend to my screeching child. I love her dearly… and I love sleep. At times the two seem to be mutually exclusive.

Go the Fuck to Sleep has topped Amazon’s bestseller chart a month ahead of publication. CLICK HERE to pre-order your copy.

Source: The Guardian - Foul-mouthed bedtime book is hit with parents