Toddling along

I appear to be the mother of a fully fledged toddler. Oscar is walking! It began between Christmas and New Year with him taking the odd 'buzz lightyear' step (more like falling with style), and he has now moved on to staggering around the house like a drunken sailor, looking very pleased with himself indeed. Neil and I took him to be fitted for his first pair of shoes yesterday, which was a big event in the W-D calendar (he is size three-and-a-half 'F', for anyone interested - presumably the 'F' stands for 'Flipping expensive'...?)
It is not just the walking that earmarks the beginning of Oscar's toddler era. There are signs and clues everywhere. We appear to have a living room full of plastic beeping things (last year's blog entries that state that Oscar is content with playing with simple toys now seem cringeingly naieve). More food goes onto our kitchen floor than into Oscar's mouth, and he now scrapes his once eagerly devoured vegetables off his tongue as if they were sulphuric acid. He is permanently covered in a crusty layer of food, snot and household detritus (and screams blue murder if I try to get anywhere near him with a damp flannel). Despite abundance of beeping things, his best games ever are trying to empty the kitchen bin onto the floor, taking the tops off milk cartons, making the cereal dust in the bottom of the Shreddies box 'snow' over his head, squashing grapes into the sofa and sticking his fingers up his nose and offering the contents to Mummy. I have the world's worst 'poker face' and my poorly concealed sniggers just egg him on, but oh it's all so much fun! Although I could live with less baby snot.