My two year old has always loved music, from the newborn days when she’d stop and turn her head towards the direction of my (mostly awful) singing, to now, when she tends to do most of the singing herself.

Singing at bedtime

As a baby, we did a singing session at a local church hall, involving lots of plastic instruments and bells. Then, at around 9 months, we switched to a different club that didn’t clash with sleep patterns, and we’ve been going there ever since. But, due to changes in lifestyle and childcare patterns, this Thursday will be Frog’s last ever session at that group.

On the one hand, it makes me sad. It’s a bit like the end of an era. The familiar faces of other mums at the group and the little Thursday afternoon routine that we’ve stuck to over the past year will be no more. The classes are in a local gym and I’ve become used to lifting my ever-growing tot up to the window, to watch the serene swimmers doing lengths in the pool and the polished professionals lounging in the jacuzzi. It’s a rhythm of our life that I’ve taken for granted but, as with all things child related, it has suddenly stopped and we’re now moving to a new beat.

Without the weekly singing sessions, my karaoke queen will have to be content with the regular dance and song classes run at her nursery. She’ll have to amuse herself with constant YouTube videos of her favourite rhymes. I have no doubt the evening family meal will continue to be punctuated by bursts of Old MacDonald Had A Farm and Row Row Row Your Boat. She’s nothing if not predictable.

There’s a certain infectious vitality in toddler song. When my tot is really belting it out, she’s lost in music, deep in a world of high notes and comforting stories. She sits back and closes her eyes, moving her arms as if conducting her own imaginary orchestra. The complete lack of self-consciousness is infectious. She could be in the middle of a busy supermarket or alone in her bedroom and her behaviour would be the same.

As loud and repetitive and often comical as her singing is, it marks the soundtrack of our lives: joyful and full of gusto. And for that reason, I never want her singing to stop.

(Just remind me of that next time she serenades me with a Justin Bieber track.)

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Ballet was a big part of our Saturday morning routine throughout my childhood. The walk along the leafy Bristol streets, hand in hand with my mum, chattering away. The smell of new ballet shoes and the excitement of visiting the dance shop with all its multi-coloured tutus. Sitting in a freezing church hall practising “good toes, naughty toes” before getting onto the fun stuff – the jumps and the routines.

Parenthood has a habit of bringing all the best bits of our own early years into sharp focus. I can still hear the rip as my friend shredded my pink tutu, made lovingly by my mum, during one of the many shows we put on for the adults (who were probably incredibly bored at the time but did a great job of hiding it). I can still feel the scratchy net, deliciously puffy and rigid against my skin, as I proudly pointed my toes and imagined myself the lead role in Swan Lake.

As I got older, dance continued to be a big part of my life.

I gave up ballet for a while and started jazz. I joined a contemporary dance group and rehearsed for hours during weekends. I danced and danced and danced.

And then I stopped.

It was around the time I had to make my decisions about which subjects to continue with at A’Level. I chose not to take up dance and to focus on the other things I loved – writing and journalism. And just like that, those early Saturday mornings and scratchy lycra and freezing cold church halls were gone.

But I remember them fondly.

So it was with a sense of regret I listened to the words of my toddler’s physiotherapist recently. “As she grows up, it’s a good idea to encourage her to take part in sports like swimming and cycling,” she said. “Although her flexible joints are likely to make her quite good at things like ballet, those kinds of activities might place too much stress on them and cause her pain.”

Instantly, the idea of walking hand in hand with my own daughter to ballet lessons, watching her line up alongside the other children to perform “good toes, naughty toes”, tying her hair back into a bun with grips and hair nets… all those images went out of the window.

The thing is, I’m aware Frog might not even like ballet. She loves swimming and reading and music. She loves drawing and digging for worms and jumping in puddles. She loves the same kinds of things most two year olds do. It’s not like she’s pirouetting round the living room or performing arabesques across the garden.

But one day she might. One day she might turn to me and say, “Mummy, can I do ballet?”

And I’m not quite sure what I’ll say to that.

Perhaps her hypermobile joints might not cause her discomfort, in which case ballet – or any kind of dance – is a possibility. As she’s just a toddler, it’s difficult to predict if her hyperflexibility will hold her back as she grows up or if she’ll catch up with her peers when it comes to physical milestones. After all, she’s only been walking a couple of months and she’s already running and jumping.

It’s an unknown, like most things parenting related.

For now though, I think we’ll content ourselves with just wearing the tutu. And reading in it. And spilling baked beans on it. And pretty much never taking it off.

After all, the tutu’s the most important bit about ballet. Right?

***

This post has been written for this week’s Gallery, where the theme is Sport. Head over to Sticky Fingers to read the rest.

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I keep catching her doing rather strange things. Like popping bits of food into her nappy, in case she gets peckish later on. Or gurning. She loves to gurn.

She’s also taken to falling into an immediate trance at the sight of a lit candle, hippy that she is.

The thing is, I have a feeling this behaviour may develop a little further. I’ll let you into a little secret about me: I was a rather “quirky” child. My mother maintains that I was “weird”, but I prefer “quirky”.

I was a show-off (surprised?!) and loved to dance around in my tutu putting on shows for anyone willing to watch. But I was also a bit sensitive. And when I say sensitive, I mean, well, strange.

I went through a bit of a superstitious phase when I was about seven. It involved puffing my cheeks out like a pig, holding my nose and twirling on the spot. I did it everywhere. Before walking through doors, walking over drains, standing up, sitting down. If it involved moving from one spot to another, I had to do the cheek-puffy-nose-holdy-twirly-thing. And to this day, I have no idea why.

I can vividly remember being with my dad in a busy supermarket and performing my little routine before walking through the automatic doors. I expect he was creased with embarrassment, but I didn’t care. In fact, I thought it was perfectly normal.

It doesn’t end there. I also had imaginary friends. Perfectly normal, I hear you say. But I took it further. My “friends” were actually an imaginary mother and imaginary sister. And their names? Ampy-Soogal and Ampy-Rollo. Again, no idea.

The list is endless, really. I won’t bore you any further. Except to admit one final piece of quirkiness: every Saturday morning while watching Going Live, I blew Phillip Schofield a kiss. Why? Because I thought he was my dad.

Strange child.

Dad

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