As soon as you become a parent everyone is full of well meaning advice and the future forever beckons you. For the first six months or so anyway. ‘As soon as she’s 3/6/12 weeks old she will sleep better’ ‘once he’s 4 months things will seem so much easier’ the list is endless. Until your baby hovers close to becoming a toddler that is, and what was once encouragement becomes a chorus of ‘just you wait until…’

We’ve mastered sitting, walking and climbing stairs. We’re well seasoned in the trials and tribulations of teething pain and fussy eating. A couple of months ago we patted ourselves on the back and breathed a sigh of relief; we had made it through the first year!

As soon as the single candle on top of the cake was blown out we were being warned of the terrible twos.

Pah, I thought. She’s only just one, we’ve got ages until the tantrums and the stubborn streak rears its ugly head. Look at my beautiful, innocent, grinning one year old, how could she ever cause mischief?

About four weeks passed and suddenly those bright, innocent eyes glare back at me, meeting my stare with defiance. Suddenly there are tantrums when she doesn’t get her way, the pout of the bottom lip when I dare to utter ‘no’.

There was me thinking that we had plenty of time until the terrible twos, but they seem to have blindsided us and arrived early. People may have warned us but they never explained how soon it would arrive and just how screamy the tantrums can get!

Suddenly, after months of being perfectly happy to sit and play with a toy it’s no longer enough. Not when there are things to climb, things to throw, packs of nappies to empty and rip apart as soon as mummy blinks.

Nothing is safe and if anyone says ‘no’ or moves things one again to a higher shelf safely out of reach then they are met with an impressive protest from my once mild mannered child.

She pouts, she raises her arms, stamps her feet and she screams. I try to ignore her, stifle my giggles and cross my fingers that we can avoid this happening in public for a while!