Talia

Talia Willow, sweet baby, she is a very placid creature, happy to potter and play.  From very early on she hasn't been centred on me (and milk) but on the family unit as a whole, bouncing from person to person and with a particular instinct for comforting whichever of us feels particularly lonely or sad.


She loves all small figures and dolls, anything with a face.  Tali makes the Ostheimer animals talk to each other, and kisses the Sylvanians.


She must inspect any game any of the others have.  She also helpfully likes to blow on their food for them to cool it down, and blow out candles, it's one of her favourite tricks (along with throwing bricks and crayons down the back of the radiator and saying "uhoh").  Rowan is getting very frustrated with all of this cheerful "helping" now.  Especially when her elaborate train tracks get destroyed.




The age and stage I find hardest as a mother is this part where they are so mobile yet still non-verbal.  As Tali picks more and more words, and starts to really communicate with us and respond to speech, I get a greater sense of give-and-take, of being able to negotiate and co-operate.  Talking, really conversing, is the point at which I feel like I really start to understand them again for the first time since they were utterly dependant on me.  I adore how Talia talks, how her clumsy baby words fit together.  We're getting some kind of rhythm back now in how we work together as a unit.