Slightly untoward

I was greeted, upon my return from work the other day, by the joyous news that our eldest daughter had observed to her mother that "Daddy has a sausage bum." I may have to start wearing pyjamas, although the damage is really done now, I suppose, if indeed it should be considered damage. My immediate reaction to my wife's tale of how she had proceeded to teach our daughter the words 'vagina' and 'penis' was to recoil slightly in middle class shock. Only slightly. This is slightly untoward, my instincts told me. Then I remembered about my liberal, open minded credentials and thought about it a bit more. It's no more naughty - or indeed less admirable - than a two year-old learning the words for arms, fingers, or small intestines. I quickly decided that I am proud of this development.

When she realised that I had been made aware of the leap in her anatomical knowledge, our daughter proudly listed all of our mutual acquaintances to me, noting in each case who had which. Most of them she got right. I expect this is how all the best surgeons start out.

This is just one example of the rapid changes in maturity recently displayed by both of our young ladies. Not all of them are as desirable as being able to identify the owners of willies. Twice in recent weeks, our eldest daughter has found it necessary to bite her little sister's hand. Quite hard. On each occasion she refused to apologise, giving us no choice but to invoke the Naughty Step. Except, in our slightly unprepared case, it was less of a step than a nice comfy sofa. Consequently, the threat of staying there until she said sorry was somewhat less than sufficient. Besides which, she's a stubborn one.

We recognised our duty as parents to make her fully aware of the seriousness of her offence, which meant that we had to shout at her a bit. It is unimaginably difficult to direct serious wrath at someone you love so much, even when the cause was her having inflicted pain upon someone else that you love equally hugely. In the end, you're left with the paradoxical motivation of shouting in the hope that it will prevent you from having to do so again. Complicated stuff, parenting.

The bitee, meanwhile, has been making her own steady progress through life. She now has at least one molar taking up room in the depths of her mouth, with more almost certainly imminent, judging by the amount of time she spends screaming rather than sleeping at night. The succession of nasty colds she has suffered has not helped, but the number of weeks since anyone in our house had a decent night's sleep is increasing beyond any sense of fairness.

As if by way of apology, she has also mastered the art of kissing. She does seem to favour the slightly awkward mouth open technique more often than not, but she knows what she's doing, and she enjoys it for the unpretentious display of affection it is. Besides kiss chase, her favourite game is very much hide and seek. And it's so easy to keep her happy playing this. I hid behind the same curtain at least a dozen times in quick succession the other day, but the unbridled glee on her face upon finding me each time was undiminished. I'll miss that when she develops a sense of repetition. It's quite a nice view out of that window. She has also become very adept at running away when she's been naughty, but it's one of those things that you forgive because it's so cute. Perhaps I should be worried that she has already learnt this technique of manipulation.

But my favourite, recent advance has undoubtedly been our two year-old's new ability to recognise, in written form, her own name and also, bizarrely, the word 'zoo.' I have chosen to overlook the fact that she insisted this morning that the word 'moo' was also pronounced 'zoo,' and remain immensely proud of her burgeoning literary skills. All the more so after I heard a father telling his daughter off in a bookshop the other day for liking books too much. "We're going to have to stop all this reading," he warned her in all seriousness. It was like witnessing a prequel to Fahrenheit 451.

Now that really is untoward.