This week Freya has started showing obvious signs of creating and using something imaginary.

One of her favourite cuddly-toys, a chicken from Harrods, is given food which is stored at a particular place on one of the walls in Freya’s bedroom. It’s always taken from the same place, and, what is perhaps as interesting, is held firmly in Freya’s hand(s) until she reaches the chicken to feed it.

We took Freya to a dietitian last week. Not because we had to, but simply to put our minds at rest that we are not missing something in her vegan diet.

It’s easy to assume one has the necessary knowledge, having been vegan for a good 20 years, but even with the help of relevant books and info from the net it’s perfectly possible to have missed something, especially when Freya is going through a “not so interested in food” period.

As it turns out, the dietitian thought we were doing fine, and probably giving our child better nutrition than the majority of meat-eaters. I wasn’t so surpised to here that; just in oils alone, Freya gets a daily intake of linseed (good for omega 3) and rapeseed oil, as well as olive oil and veggie maragarine.

Just to double check, I took Freya to get weighed and measured recently, fearing that she may not have put on too much since her last visit, only to find out that she is completely average. One of the few times I’ll be glad to her that kind of statement about my daughter.

Like most toddlers, Freya is starting to master the pronunciation of one-syllable words beginning with the letter “b”.

Thanks to Teletubbies she can confidently (and regularly) say “bear”, though other words in her repertoire include “bag” and “boo” (or the Swedish equivalent).

Bag, bear and ball (which she doesn’t actually say as often as one would think, given the amount of balls she sees) sound the same, with bear being much more forceful in tone.