SylkeWeb – Sylke’s mutterings to herself on an island not so far away

He must have had one. There were these very disturbed and short nights just a short while back and now the child is asking 'why?' and 'why?' every five seconds it seems. In addition to that we also get a lot of 'I want to do that' which we didn't have so much before. A different child.

We are trying to reflect some of the why questions back to Yannick and I think he's slowly realising that he can answer some of them himself. But the constant 'whys' are really getting to me, approximately after 'why' number twenty I can't help but start asking back 'why not?'.

It's so weird, as if he's only just realised that the word 'why' exists. He used to ask 'what's that' and 'how does this work', 'what does this do' and those questions were fine as you got different angles to explain something that way. The 'why' questions seem to be replacing all of those and more. They always seem to be very wide and often we have to ask back simply to find out what exactly he's asking about. Then you are half way through explaining and boom, the next 'why'. Argh.

The 'I want to do that' is a lot less troublesome as I was always hoping for some more initiative from his side on certain things. Now for example he's showing some interest in putting his own shoes on which is good. Sadly, eating doesn't seem to fall under this category. If I want him to eat more than his limited level of patience makes him, I still have to feed him. He's just bored of eating after five minutes and always needs a toy to keep him at the table. It doesn't matter much whether he really likes something or not, food is just not that important.

However, Yannick's English is really coming on now. We were at a friend's place today and he was asking her question about toys which he never did like that before. It's so nice to see how confident he is getting in speaking in his second language. Soon he'll be like a native speaker and outdo me easily!

Today Yannick had his first half day at pre-school. He went in without batting an eye lid in hesitation. OK, he stopped to sit on a bench next to the entrance for the first five minutes and watched what was going on but after that he set off to play as if he'd never done anything else. After another five minutes or so I went over to him to tell him that I was leaving. He wasn't bothered too much. He looked at me in a way that it seemed like he was trying to find out whether I was really going and then just played on.

How brave is that? He went in there without knowing anybody and doesn't even speak great English yet. I think at almost three years of age this is very courageous, especially if you've never really staid with anybody else but your parents. OK, my sister took him out to play last year a few times but that was that.

He was supposed to stay there for three hours. Two hours after leaving I received a phone call that Yannick wasn't happy at all any more and was asking for his mummy. So I set off to collect my brave little boy who was now crying while sitting on a helpers lap. Awww. He was happy to see me and just wanted to go home. I asked him whether he wanted to come back tomorrow and again without hesitation: 'yes'. He actually really liked being there and I was assured that he was playing nicely up to about five minutes before they called me. I guess that it simply all got a bit much after a while and he needed some moral support. I'm expecting something similar for the rest of this week (two more half days) and maybe for next week too.

I think part of his courage must come from the fact that we have a couple of books which described pre-school pretty well and he was really keen on playing with other children. I was probably more nervous beforehand than he was. And while it was really nice to have a couple of hours to myself today (spent with cleaning of all things…) I was missing my little man and shed a couple of tears about how fast they grow up.

Yes, guess what, another cold. Ever since before Christmas it's going this way:

2 weeks of cold.
2 weeks of feeling better (but never completely without slightly runny nose).
Then it starts again.

It seems to be different infections every time as they have slightly different symptoms. Some leave my sinuses alone, others go deep.

This one certainly did take over completely. It took me about five days to get out of the headache daze to finally be able to do something to help myself. A week later I feel more human again and manage to spend time with Yannick without getting annoyed with almost everything he does.

The worst thing about this cold is that it did have to turn me into Mrs Grump right while Frank was away for several days. I think my poor child didn't know what hit him at times… (no, I did not hit him).

I HATE COLDS.

Today I locked myself and Yannick out for the second time within a couple of month. The the key was inside in the lock of the front door when the door slammed shut.

Last time this happened I paid £115 to get a new lock. This time my new contingency plan worked, albeit with a slight hitch.

After climbing over the fence from our neighbour's garden I found that the key for the back door that I had left with our neighbours after our first accident didn't work. I was totally flabbergasted. And I had get back over the fence… Not my favourite past-time.

In the end I phoned Frank who also had a key for that door and asked him whether it had the same number on it as the one I had here. It didn't, which gave me hope. After a long day being out at Hillier's Garden and a café Yannick and I drove all the way to Farnborough to pick up Frank at the end of his working day - and when we arrived back home I found after another fence climbing incidence, that, hurray, his key was the right one! Phew.

It's funny but dry runs really work to kindle an interest in unknown/previously disliked foods.

At Christmas time Yannick got a little cooker/oven unit which was accompanied by some plastic food:

• a burger bun
• hot dog sausages with rolls
• broccoli
• cauliflower
• a burger
• a lettuce leaf
• a sunny side up egg
• corn on the cob
• tomato slices
• a chicken thigh

Some of these items he had never seen in his life, for example a sunny side up egg or a burger. We also don't eat corn. However, he loves cooking, frying and baking all of these items.

Inspired by this I thought I could include him a little more in our real food preparation and he loves that.

Before the cooker, Yannick would only eat egg as omelette. I had tried scrambled egg and hard boiled egg but he wouldn't touch either of them. So after seeing him play, for the first time I made a sunny side egg and I gave him strips of toast to dip into the yolk. He LOVED it.

Today I thought I show him several incarnations of egg. We did a sunny side up once again, a normal breakfast egg (5 minutes) and a hard boiled one. As expected only the sunny side up one was excepted. I showed him the soft yolk of the five minutes egg and he finally accepted some of that - but only poured over his almost finished sunny side up egg. The hard boiled egg became only interesting after I put some sauce over it (in Germany we eat those with something similar to tartar sauce), but by that time he was too full already to appreciate it.

From the other plastic food items we have only had hot dog sausages which are like Frankfurters and he loves those. I already knew that broccoli wasn't going to be a big hit even though he loves serving his plastic broccoli. But at least he would try it again after playing with it.

I will have to try cauliflower cheese again, last time it was 'so so' with him. About corn I'm not sure as I don't like it too much and I think Yannick wasn't too keen on it either when he had it somewhere else recently.

And guess what, my child doesn't like baked beans too much. Just like Frank and I.

Things he loves:

• Cucumber.
• Apples. Sometimes kiwi. He used to like pears, have to try those again.
• Porridge with banana.
• Fruit purées.
• Rye-bread, crispy bread rolls, or toast with cheese, salami or paté.
• Camembert/brie.
• Sandwiches with salmon, prawns or cheese.
• Pasta/tortellini/ravioli with red or green pesto and crème fraîche.
• Pasta with smoked salmon (or prawns), courgette, and dill in crème fraîche.
• Rice with chicken in sauce hollandaise and if I'm lucky some veggies in there (mushrooms/courgette).
• Rice with braising steak and super sauce (with puréed carrots and red wine!).
• Rice with left over super sauce and chicken meat (marinated in soy sauce).
• Pizza.
• Fish fingers.
• Chocolate, biscuits with chocolate - but not cake (in general)!
• Smarties and milk chocolate buttons.
• Yoghurts and fromage frais.

We had the following dialogue today:

Me: (by accident speaking aloud) Oh, I'm bleeding.
Yannick: Where are you bleeding?
Me: Oh, ehm, hm, women bleed every month, there's nothing wrong with that.
Yannick: *confused expression*
Me: *thinking how am I going to explain this one to a two year old???* That's what we do when we are not pregnant.
Yannick: What's pregnant?
Me: *thinking have I never used that word before???* Ehm, when there's a baby in mummy's belly.
Yannick: What is that? (pointing at a sanitary pad)
Me: Ehm, that's like a nappy for grown ups. To make sure that mummy's underpants stay clean.
Yannick: How do the babies get in the belly?
Me: *should have expected that question sooner or later* Ehm, um, when mummy and daddy really love each other a baby will come.
Yannick: *another confused look*
Me: *frantically thinking about what to say as he's probably now thinking that we don't love each other* Don't worry, mummy and daddy do really love each other but there's currently no baby in mummy's belly.

At that point he finally changed the topic. Phew.

Anybody here who can give me some hints on how to explain this better? I am actually a great believer in explaining things as they really are (apart from Father Christmas :P).

Don't we all know that? Ha!

There are definitely two kinds of people: parents and people without children. They live in different universes.

Either we are parents and are witnessing first hand that we are not able to live our lives as before any more (going hand in hand with a strong need to communicate about all the things that we are now exposed to on a daily basis) - or we are without children and think about people with children that they have become total bores, only being able to talk about their children and related things, and the children, oh don't let me start about the children…

Apart from being completely absorbed by the antics of the little monsters our emotional world also changes. Yep.

Some years back I had a conversation with somebody who claimed that only in a German movie a baby could be killed or die (he'd just seen such a movie, goodness only knows which one it was), never in an American one. And that it was just completely sick. Needless to say this was an American who said that. Well, we all know that Hollywood movies are usually quite predictable and yes, a dying baby would not make a movie easier to digest and therefore sell.

While it might not be easy to see a baby die in a movie, it still might be part of the story. So I still think there is nothing wrong with this. We all watch movies in which people die, so why are babies so different?

The point is that ever since I've got my own child I can understand a lot better why dying babies in a movie are hard to take. I've become completely soppy when there are children involved in a movie and anybody around them dies or something happens to the children themselves. So much actually that it can become unbearable and all I can do is cry (and I never used to be a movie crier).

The person who was making the comment about German movies was a parent to three children at the time, so naturally this would be a lot more upsetting to him than to me (no children at that point). However, I still maintain that death is a normal part of our lives and therefore should not be censored out of movies.

And now I've run out of steam. I'm sure we all could come up with lots more examples how parents change through our children but for today this is enough. After all I've got to think about my night that will most likely be disrupted several times by my toddler and the possibility of a very early start of the day.

Some time before Christmas I had cut some skewers into smaller pieces, so that Yannick had some sticks that he could transport with his train trucks. I usually put them away before other children came around as they were not completely safe with smaller children (as in "don't eat") but they were OK for Yannick.

When we were in Germany over the Christmas period (just a few nights in) Yannick woke up early one night and was getting more and more upset. He was crying and saying something. It took a while before we worked out that it was about the little sticks.

Finally we got it: he was saying 'Bella has your sticks' (Bella is one of his friends, and Yannick still mostly refers to himself with 'you' - so he meant 'his' sticks). He was really inconsolable about this. We were really surprised at this coming up there and then.

Eventually I remembered that Bella had visited us not long before the Germany trip and that I also gave her a set of sticks (she had seen Yannick's and wanted them). I had said to Yannick that these were different sticks from the ones he had and he seemed to understand at the time as he didn't get bothered.

When we realised what the dream was about it looked like that he actually felt cheated and that he thought that Bella took some of his sticks. So I had to explain to him over and over again, that those were different sticks and that his ones were safely at home. It was a bizarre conversation in a way as these little sticks were really nothing, they could be reproduced at any time and yet, they were so valuable to Yannick.

Eventually our little man went back to sleep and we were sitting there in disbelief about what just happened.