Jane

Driving has just become that little bit less stressful because we have a new toy for the car. It might just save our marriage too.

Let me explain. The Koinuchans generally get on very well with each other. We have fun and enjoy each other's company. As soon as we step into a car together everything changes. I'm usually the designated driver. Mrs K map reads. Little Miss K heckles from the back, demanding Josie Jump. I try to drive as carefully as I can. Mrs K frets that a) I am not driving carefully enough, b) there are too many dangerous drivers about and c) I am not listening closely enough to her directions. Little Miss K continues heckling.

Then we get lost. I'm stressed because I don't know where we're going. Mrs K is stressed because she doesn't know where we are mostly because I wasn't listening to her closely enough. Little Miss continues heckling. At this point I usually ask Mrs K if she would like to drive. She refuses, knowing that with my dreadful sense of direction we'd get even more lost and we'd stay that way. She knows that with my map directions the burnt wreckage of our car would be discovered six months later in some obscure corner of the Hampshire countryside. So we continue bickering until the road sign for the B36713 looms over the horizon and we realise that we were twenty miles off course. ...And at that precise moment, Little Miss decides to fill her nappy.

This, simply, Would Not Do.

Our saviour arrived after a particularly miserable journey when Mrs K got lost on the way back from a play date. I was at work, but by the sound of things my wife had made a couple of unexpected detours down untarmacked bridleways. At this point, we decided that enough was enough and we bought a TomTom GPS.

Car journeys have never been the same since. At the start of the journey we enter the postcode of our destination, press the 'Done' button and we simply follow the instructions. No stress. No bickering. No interruptions to Josie Jump. I've almost come to regard Jane, the Tom Tom's female voice, as a close personal friend. When Jane's in charge nothing can go wrong.

Last weekend, the three of us plus Nonna and Yaya went out to have a pub lunch. I pulled out of our drive. Jane told me to 'Turn Right'. Little Miss then told me to 'Turn Right' with precisely the same intonation. Jane then told me to 'Turn Left'. Little Miss concurred. Jane then told me to take the first exit on the roundabout. Little Miss started yelling 'TURN LEFT! TURN LEFT!' as if her life depended on it. And she was right. So I turned left.

An idea popped into my head. You can customise the sound samples on the Tom Tom to your own - or anyone else's - voice. Wouldn't it be fun to get Little Miss K to give directions? Just imagine, you're driving along then a little squeaky voice announces 'Laa Laa, Po, painting bwed stick' and you'd know that up ahead is roundabout and you need to take the third exit.

Other images materialised in my deluded brain. Me and Mrs K arguing whether than 'bwed stick' meant the second or third exit. Little Miss K heckling her own voice and giving us misleading directions. The nightmare of taking colleagues to an important customer meeting, being forced to rely on the TomTom, and then being two hours late and having to explain why. The TomTom having an 'unfortunate accident' and trying to use our rudimentary map reading skills again.

Jane, we love you. Please, never leave us!

The Casserole

The time? 5.30pm
The place? Castle Koinuchan
The occasion? Daddy has just arrived home from work.

...And Little Miss K is hungry.

For the past week or so Little Miss' Nonna and Yaya - her maternal grandmother and great grandmother respectively - have been staying with us. My wife's family are, without exception, good cooks. As you can imagine, getting home and finding something delicious waiting for dinner has made even the most mediocre of work days bearable.

Nonna and Yaya had spent the afternoon cooking, so the kitchen counter was laden with plastic boxes full of home made tomato sauce and minestrone. And tonight's meal is one of my favourites - beef and veggie casserole. Little Miss loved this dish when she first started eating solids. Unfortunately, despite our best efforts to introduce her to new and exciting food concepts such as 'carrots', 'green beans' and 'broccoli', dinner now means 'pasta'. If not 'pasta', then dinner must mean 'meat with mashed potato and veg' or perhaps 'rice with carefully disguised meat and veg in it' on a good day. Frustratingly casseroles are simply not on her culinary radar despite plenty of persistence from us.

Whether dinner can be ever be made ready in time for Little Miss is a moot point. She can go from 'I'm not hungry - why are you messing around in the kitchen instead of playing with me?' to 'I want a bread stick!' to 'You better get my dinner on the table now, or there will be trouble!' in the space of just two minutes. We know that she has reached the last stage when she starts trying to climb into her high chair wailing 'CHAAAIIIIIR!' in an insistent and frankly distressing manner.

As soon as I manage to get her bib on and her hands washed, her Mamma comes over with her meal. 'PASTA!' Little Miss exclaims excitedly with an enormous relieved grin. She looks at her dinner. 'NO PASTA!' she wails. 'YOGURT! NOW!'

We really have to do something about her manners.

'No, my love,' I patiently explain. 'This is a yummy stew that Nonna has made for you.' Her little face goes red, then develops an expression of utter contempt. 'OK, Pasta,' she calmly but firmly states. 'Try it, you'll like it,' I counter. 'Here, have a spoon.' Little Miss picks up her spoon and starts to prod her casserole with an air of fatalism. Her parents join her with their meals. In the meantime Nonna starts filling the kettle. Little Miss will get her casserole by fair means or foul.

Five minutes and half a dozen molecules of casserole later, Little Miss puts down her spoon and yells 'All done! OK, yogurt! Cheese! PLUM!'. 'No, try some more,' I reply. Little Miss looks avariciously at my plate. 'MMMMMM! CARROTS!' she announces, conveniently forgetting that there are carrots in front of her already. Then she notices my cabbage. 'WANT LETTUCE!' she adds. I put a little of each from my plate onto hers in the vain hope that she might prefer Daddy Carrots to Little Miss K Carrots. More half hearted veggie prodding ensues.

Not a moment too soon, Nonna announces that Little Miss K's pasta is ready. She whips her granddaughter's plate away, blasts the remaining food in a liquidiser, then adds the puree to the freshly cooked pasta, sprinkles parmesan cheese on top and returns Little Miss' plate to her. Little Miss greets this new development with great enthusiasm. 'PASTA! Mmmmm OK, Pasta!'.

She eats everything. All of her casserole, plus the 60g of pasta her Nonna had cooked for her. She then burps once with great gusto.

We really, really need to do something about her table manners.

Nudie Rudie

This is likely to get a bit fluffy in places. You have been warned.

While Mrs Koinuchan was expecting we read lots of books about child rearing. We were hoping that they might prove useful once our sproglette had made her grand appearance. On the whole, they haven't. For some reason the most important lesson - do what works for you, not what some self appointed childcare guru suggests - wasn't covered in any of them. Probably a bit of a downer on their book sales I guess. Anyway, one they all agreed upon was that a good bedtime routine was vital at the end of the day. In summary: get your little darling used to a certain way of doing things and they will willingly go to bed.

Hey, it works for us. In her routine, she’s not allowed to watch television after 6pm. Dancing to Josie Jump with her Daddy, on the other hand, is mandatory. By 7.30pm Little Miss knows that her 'Bah Time' is imminent. All her Mamma needs to do is say 'Bathtime!' and she will scuttle up the stairs without a single word of complaint. She knows that her Daddy is ready and waiting with her bath run, her towel and changing mat ready and a clean vest, nappy and pyjamas waiting for afterwards. And afterwards, her Mamma will clean her teeth and give her a bottle of Happy Cow milk.

Bathtime is a little bit of bittersweet Daddy/Little Miss K quality time. On a good day, we get Nudie Rudie - her playful and rather under clothed secret identity. For some reason, seeing my toddler daughter on a nudie rampage is incredibly funny; effectively a curly haired, giggly tummy on matchstick legs. And judging by her reaction to her reflection in our bedroom mirror, she must think it is pretty hilarious too. When she is in the bath we sing about winding bobbins, play tickle with her Moo wash mitten and squirt each other with her bath toys. Dressing her is still akin to trying to get a wet suit on an espresso fuelled octopus, but I do get a huge heartfelt cuddle and a sloppy kiss afterwards. On a bad day, she just continuously yells The Dreaded Almighty 'OUT!' and her bottle simply can't come quickly enough.

To say that Little Miss K has had a mixed relationship with water is an understatement. When she was roughly seven months old, she had a course of lessons at a local swimming pool. Since her Mamma had been a pesciolino (little fish) and had learnt how to swim at an early age, it seemed a fun thing to do. Ermmm... No. Remember Little Miss' reaction to nurses? It turns out that large expanses of water aren't her thing either. The instructor didn't help. If you ever want to hear a lead-footed rendition of 'Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush' with all the joie de vivre of a mummified stoat I know precisely where to send you.

'What about the seaside?' I hear you cry. 'All kids love the seaside...' Sadly, the one time that Little Miss has been to the seaside was less than a qualified success. Little Miss' Nonna lives in Palermo, Sicily. Amongst other things, this region of Italy is famous for its beautiful seaside - it has warm sunshine, clear water, lots of fish and a distinct lack of Kiss Me Quick hats and Little & Large variety shows. An ideal, gentle introduction to joys of the seaside you might think... We have photographic evidence of a ten month old Little Miss K before and after her first experience with the briny. The before picture shows a curious proto-toddler with her Mamma looking at the water, little feet dangling six inches above the gently lapping waves. The after picture shows the same child with her legs folded up under her bottom, yelling at her Mamma. Luckily Little Miss cheered up when she tried her first chocolate ice cream later that afternoon.

Bath times (getting back to my original topic) used to be stressful too. They were a necessary activity, but not one to be savoured. At one point we considered using a sheep dip, but there weren't any readily available on eBay. Anyway, we realised something important the evening after the seaside trauma. To wit: Little Miss wants to do things her way or not at all. Put Little Miss in her bath on her back and she will yell at you. Allow her to sit on her haunches, just like she does when she is playing, she will happily sit in the bath long enough to make washing her almost pleasant.

In other words let her think she has got her own way, even if she hasn't. This little nugget has been more useful to us than anything written by, say, Gina Ford or Tracy Hogg.

There. I've just saved you a few quid.

Injections

Thanks to the efforts of several generations of test tube wielding scientists in white coats, today's children can be protected from many of the nastier childhood diseases with a quick jab or ten from a friendly nurse at your local GP surgery. Or at least this is the way it seems from our perspective. Little Miss K begs to differ.

To her, injections are a major trauma. They are inflicted by evil, merciless women with big needles and the explicit consent of her duplicitous parents. Fortunately nurses are easily identifiable by their blue uniforms and misleadingly calm mantra of 'Don't worry, Little Miss K, this won't hurt and it will be over before you know it.' Except it isn't over quickly enough. And it will hurt. And, boy, will you feel the extent of her displeasure.

Imagine what is going through her mind... 'Mamma? Daddy? Who is that scary lady? What's that she's holding? I hope it's not what I think it is. Are you wearing your protective ear muffs because I am going to let you know very soon exactly how unhappy I am. (Deep intake of breath) Huh? Wait, was that it? Hey, come back here Scary Lady, I haven't finished with you! Sod it, I'm going to yell anyway. 1, 2, 8, Charlie, Lola...'

Come to think of it, any medical professional that comes anywhere near her is Someone Who Should Not Be Trusted. They will ask her horrible parents to undress her. Big Scary Doctor will then get something cold and metallic and stick it to her chest, prod her with wooden somethings, or force her to do Tubbyrobics without a) the music from Boogie Beebies and b) her consent. And all for 'her own good'. Every time I go to the doctors with Little Miss, I dread the moment when she makes that 'I Am Not Amused' face, closely followed by the 'Don't You Dare' grimace and the 'I Want To Go Home, Now!' yell. It's not pretty.

And I pity the first dentist that attempts to examine her teeth. It's hard enough cleaning them. I can imagine Little Miss starting off with a low but insistent mantra of 'no no no no no' then making a break for the door as soon as the dentist looms over and points that light at her mouth.

Back in mid June, me and Little Miss K were visiting my father at his nursing home. It was Granddad J's birthday and he had opted to have his birthday cake in his room. Little Miss was not in a very good mood. I had already taken her away from her paddling pool and some vital pottering around the garden. Her grandfather's room was even hotter and more uncomfortable than the 30 degree Celsius heat outside. And maybe that pretty but heavy denim dress was a mistake in retrospect.

At four o'clock sharp, eight nurses rushed into the room with a large sponge cake, all singing 'Happy Birthday To You'. Little Miss K's mouth formed a perfectly round 'O' as she realised that they might be packing hypodermic syringes. And all for her. Her facial expression changed into in a mask of abject terror and she started to wail uncontrollably. She hugged me tighter and tighter. The nurses tried to act festively, joking with Granddad J and complimenting him on his granddaughter. Another took some photos to record the agony for posterity. Then my father blew out the candles and another nurse distributed the cake. And then they were gone. Little Miss, poor thing, didn't calm down until she was back in the car and we were half way home.

The nursing home gave me copies of the photos a week or so later. One photo in particular is quite memorable. In the foreground I'm holding a distraught Little Miss K doing a passable impression of a koala crossed with Edvard Munch's 'The Scream'. In the background her grandfather is blowing out the candles on his cake. Definitely one for the family album.

So does Little Miss K have Iatrophobia? Hopefully not. A few days ago she had her Pneumococcal booster. Little Miss said 'Hello' to the nurse and I sat her on my lap. Then I pulled down her jog pants and the injection was over and done before she had a chance to work out what had happened. Little Miss started to squeak once she realised that a fast one had been pulled on her, but cheered up immediately when the nurse put an 'I've Been Brave Today' sticker on her jumper. Then Little Miss said 'Bye Bye' and made a bolt for the door, Mamma and Daddy in hot pursuit.

I'm so glad that stickers are available on the NHS.