On seeing two men kissing in the park, Ruby gave me a big smile and said, “Look, Mummy, those men love each other.” It didn’t occur to her that there was anything different about the scene, or that it was comment-worthy for any  reason other than to note the affection between two people.

As much as I try not to, I worry regularly about how I am going to explain to Ruby why our family is the way it is, or, to be more specific, about why her father is not in her life. It’s a conversation I am anticipating having, with varying levels of depth and understanding, many times over the years. Inevitably, she is already aware that other people have fathers, and relatively often she inexplicably comes out with the phrase “Mummy and Daddy and Ruby,” in all sorts of odd contexts. Sooner or later I assume that this will morph into an awareness that she does not, to all intents and purposes, have a father, which will in turn lead to questions. They are questions which, rationally or not, I am dreading.

What worries me is finding the right balance of telling the truth without either confusing or hurting my daughter. I don’t want to lie to her, but I also don’t want to leave her feeling that she was unwanted or rejected, and, as much as I may sometimes feel like it, I will absolutely not be slagging her father off in front of her. In fact, I would rather leave him out of it altogether if at all possible.

Although it has preyed on my mind intermittently over the past few years, I had one of those lovely shining moments of clarity today in the park with my baby watching a gay couple kissing and seeing nothing more than the love, and realising that the answer was right in front of me. I am lucky enough right now to be living in one of the most diverse cities in the world, in a society where relationships and families come in as many packages as you can count, and at a time when my daughter is as unencumbered by learned preconceptions as she will ever be. I am not living in suburban England in the 1950s when having a child on my own at 21 would have made me a virtual outcast.

I am proud of the parent I have become. I am proud that I am raising a child on my own without giving up who I am, and that I am doing it without even the most basic level of support from her father. And, today at least, the explanation seemed incredibly clear in its simplicity: some people have a mummy and a daddy; some people have two mummies, or two daddies; some have many brothers and sisters and some live with grandparents or uncles. The fact that my daughter has only one parent is not a disadvantage; it is simply one of the many things that makes up who she is, and, like a couple kissing in an East Village park, the only thing worth remarking on is the love, which is abundant and unfaltering, and completely unlimited by the size of our little family.

We were walking in Central Park the other day when we saw a man dancing in the middle of the road. No music or anything – just rocking out to whatever track was playing inside his head. To be honest, I didn’t even look twice. You get a lot of that sort of thing out here and even in the short space of six weeks it has become really quite unremarkable, but Ruby stopped walking, stared at him and said, completely deadpan, “I don’t believe my eyes.”

She has the most wonderful gift for making me really see things. You can’t be complacent about life when you hang out with a toddler. They simply don’t let you. Just when you are starting to take things for granted, or when you forget to laugh at things, they come out with some one-liner that makes you look again and realise just how beautiful it all is.

I apologise. I’m being soppy, but I honestly have fallen in love with my baby all over again since I got out here. Yes, she is also at her most frustrating – see my earlier post on tantrums if you don’t believe me  - and she quite frequently drives me up the wall and makes me want to throw her out of the window, but then she will say something so utterly divine that I can’t imagine ever having been irritated by her. She woke me up at 6:45 the other morning (ah, yes, that was the irritating part, I remember now) to tell me that I am her best friend. I mean, how can you be annoyed in the face of that level of cuteness? It’s almost sickening at times how very cute she can be. Just when she had wound my best friend up to snapping point the other day, she came out with: “I’m not annoying. I’m a butterfly.” I mean, really. It’s enough to make your teeth hurt.

Having a child does funny things to you. One of those funny things (and I use the term ‘funny’ loosely here) is what it does to your boobs, but one that I have really only recognised recently is the way it accelerates your moods. I can now swing quite fluently from exhausted to contented to frustrated to amused to tearful to overwhelmingly in love in under five minutes, and have a bowl of spaghetti and meatballs on the table by the end. When people say it’s a rollercoaster they are understating. You learn to multi-task like you never knew you could, but you also learn to do the emotional equivalent.

I think early on it’s quite easy to be overwhelmed by this. I certainly was. It makes you question your sanity. What happens though, when you stop trying to fight it, is that you realise you can hold all these contradictory emotions side by side, and feel them all equally, and you are emotionally so much richer than you ever could have imagined.

I shall stop being so sentimental now, before you all give up on me for good, but suffice it to say that I really do learn something new every day, and most of it is taught to me by my daughter. In fact, to leave you with just one more Ruby-ism which sums it up rather nicely: “I’m living my life.”

There are few things that monopolise one’s attention more than a toddler tantrum in full flow. Ruby has had hissyfits before, and what could pass as strops, but I was in no way prepared for the screaming, thrashing, earsplitting tantrums that have issued forth from my little angel in the past couple of weeks. We have at least one major-league tantrum every day, plus three or four mini ones, and it is quite honestly a marvel to behold.

Almost all are triggered by my refusing something, whether it be something to do, eat or play with. “No, you can’t have another bowl of cheerios, you’ve had three already and it’s almost lunch time. You can have an apple instead,” is enough to throw my otherwise extremely amenable daughter into a spiral that can continue for up to an hour, to the point where both of us have completely forgotten what it is that she was screaming about in the first place. The best one yet was the hour and twenty minutes of screaming which ensued when I removed her from the bottom of the slide at the swing park because there was a queue of six children behind her waiting to go down.

On this one I have had to refer back to my own advice and very carefully Pick My Battles, but as my friend shrewdly put it, negotiating with Ruby does often feel like negotiating with a terrorist, and the fact is that I am not prepared to be held hostage by a two-year-old who thinks that she can get whatever she wants if she simply screams loud enough, so unless I am out in public where the volume of my child is more likely to have an effect on someone else’s day I tend to stick to my guns and just ride it out. She gets a few chances to calm herself down, and then she is removed to the bedroom where she can scream away to her heart’s content, while I get the washing up done and wait for her to calm down. Don’t think I’m being callous. I would love to be able to stop her from getting so distressed, but I have tried pretty much every trick I can think of to divert these meltdowns and nothing even scratches the surface, which leaves me with little option but to Ride It Out.

I can see her point of view too. It must be terribly frustrating to be two years old, feeling like you have no control over anything and being unable to express yourself fully. It’s my idea of hell, and I can understand why sometimes all she wants to do is scream. I try to give her as much choice as I can about things, and let her feel like she is in control, but as she said herself the other day when I asked what she was crying for, “Sometimes I want to cry.”

Don’t we all?

Some of them are more obvious candidates. I would say that Melanie Brown (aka Scary Spice) has been through the ringer a fair bit with that utter waste of space Eddie Murphy. My personal feelings towards men who deny their children are strong, to put it mildly, and I do identify with the struggle Mel has encountered, and from which she has managed emerge with dignity in tact. Plus, she was always my favourite Spice Girl. In fact, the list is somewhat heavy on former Spice Girls. It’s not quite clear why Sporty Spice was excluded – I can’t imagine what the others have achieved in their parenting careers that she hasn’t. Perhaps there was some sort of Spice conspiracy against her.

I suppose that apart from giving her daughter a truly ridiculous name, which seems to be a common symptom of being a celebrity parent, Katie Price has also done a commendable job of parenting. She’s not always had an easy time of it and she has faced a lot of criticism, but compared to some of the odd choices on this year’s shortlist, I would say that her place in the final fifteen is justified, although I’m not sure that her very public slagging match with the father of her two younger children, Peter André, would score her many points in the parenting leagues.

I withhold judgement on Kate Moss as I really can’t make out whether she has pulled her parenting self together or whether she is just as loopy as ever. Mrs Beckham I personally just find irritating, and I’m not sure what she has done to deserve her place, other than succeed in becoming ridiculously rich on the strength of absolutely zero talent in any field, but then I suppose in a roundabout way that does qualify her as a good mother, because she has secured a childhood for her boys that would exceed most kids’ wildest dreams. Tough call.

I have a bit of a soft spot for Charlotte Church. I think it’s probably just a combination of the smile and the accent (and her exceptional taste in girls’ names, of course!) but I reckon she would be quite a lovely mother to have. She sort of seems normal, more than any of the others do at least.

I suppose what all these women do have in common is that they manage to do what we mothers all aspire to, which is to juggle motherhood with personal and professional success, and though we may poke fun at some of them we can’t deny that they have excelled in one of the more basic requirements of good parenting which is to provide for their children, and they have done it whilst looking unfailingly (well, almost – you know who you are Ms Price) stylish and well-groomed. That said, I don’t think it would be overly cynical to suggest that this particular accolade is awarded on the strength of career success achieved alongside being a mother, rather than on the strength of their achievements as mothers who are also, by sheer coincidence, celebrities.

To cast your vote for Celebrity Mum of the Year go  www.bounty.com/celebmum

One thing I’ve noticed is that her imagination has blossomed enormously while we’ve been away. Whether the move just happens to have coincided with a developmental leap, or whether it is a direct product of her sudden forfeiture of all her usual props, Ruby’s ability to play alone, and with nothing, is mushrooming. She spends hours making tea for her animals, and I have lost count of the number of times I have been asked to blow out the candles on an invisible birthday cake.

In stark contrast, we have spent the last few days at a friend’s house in Boston, a great big sprawling place that reminds me of my own childhood in England, with kids, dogs, innumerable toys and immeasurable space. Ruby has been in heaven. She has been kayaking, swinging, sliding, trampolining, scooting, playing with the dogs, petting animals on the farm, and the list goes on and on and on. All of this stands out in sharp relief against our tiny living space in Manhattan, Ruby’s blowup mattress on my bedroom floor, her limited playthings. Even the comparatively bigger home we left behind in the UK would fit into two rooms of this beautiful house. I love my apartment, I love the higgledy-piggledy cosiness of it, and the buzz of the life outside the windows, but I know that Ruby has unwittingly made sacrifices for my adventure. Just watching her come alive with these new playmates and all this space and all these things has triggered the guilt I feel for taking her away from everything that is familiar, but then I remind myself of how beautifully she is coping with every change and every new day. I have watched her adapt from playing with her nursery friends and all her toys in the home she knows, to entertaining herself for hours with a couple of plastic cups in a tub of water in the bottom of the shower, to jumping in a kayak on a lake in Boston, and I know tomorrow she will adapt right back again, and I have to remind myself that she will be just fine.

She needs more friends her own age, I can see that now, and I will make that my focus when I get back to the city, but I am not going to attempt to replicate the amount of toys she has at home because I can see now that it is completely unnecessary. Just watching her ability to entertain herself with the most makeshift of toys has shown me that, if anything, being over-stimulated and over-entertained numbs her ability to imagine. She has had a ball up here in Boston, but I know full well that if this level of attention and entertainment were at her disposal all the time she would still reach the same points of frustration and boredom that she does at home. I guess, like anything else, it all comes down to variation, and while I can’t wait to come back her for Thanksgiving and set her loose again, I think that learning to make her own fun might be one of the most valuable lessons she learns.

Even if it hadn’t been such a treat for me, even it hadn’t been for a fantastic cause, and even if the music had been dreadful, I would have been happy to be there. I have seen few things more striking than the skyline of Manhattan under a full moon from the top of the Cooper Square Hotel last night.

Conversely I would have been happy listening to John Forté, the artist taking the stage last night, in a grubby basement without the luxury of an open bar. After spending seven years in prison, Forté was released earlier this year when his 14-year sentence was personally commuted by George Bush. He used to work with Lauren Hill and the Fugees, and I had heard a little of his music before, but it couldn’t have prepared me for the show last night. Just a man with a guitar and a microphone, the view from the roof could have been of the aurora borealis and my attention would still have been on the tiny stage. Forté’s voice and demeanor were, for want of a better word, breathtaking. He engaged so completely with the audience that I’m sure we could all have believed he was singing to each one of us individually. You couldn’t doubt, listening to this beautiful man making such beautiful music, that what he had to say mattered, and that his music would be touching the world before too long.

Look out for this one. I’m not generally one to admit to things like auras, but even I could tell there was something special about this guy. If we’re being really honest, I quite fancied him too….

Photo by Peter Ruprecht

Whoever designed my apartment had either never lived indoors, and as such had no idea that you do not put showers in kitchens, or they just thought they would test out exactly how much oddness people are willing to accept in order to live in Manhattan. Don’t get me wrong. I think it’s bloody brilliant. It cracks me up. I also find it hilarious that the microwave and the toaster categorically cannot be switched on at the same time, that in a living room barely big enough to do a passable pirouette there is a full-sized piano (obviously) and that the only sink in the place is the kitchen sink, meaning that if I don’t do the dishes every night everything gets covered in toothpaste, or you find yourself washing pasta sauce out of your hairbrush.

Equally entertaining is the fact that Ruby (who has only ever  had baths) announced on the first night that she “does not like showers”. She really was very, very upset by the jet of water aimed squarely at the top of her head from what must seem to her an enormous height. Ruby really loves her baths, they’re a big part of her routine, and clearly from a hygiene point of view it is necessary for her to wash, so I had to be a little inventive. I hit up the local pound store (obviously not called a pound store over here) for a big plastic storage box, which now sits in the bottom of the shower and gets transformed every evening into a miniature bubble bath. Ruby thinks it is the funniest thing she has ever seen. She sits in there every night for three times as long as she would normally spend in the bath, and makes “coffee” for us, with two plastic cups and her foamy bath water. In her own words, “Bubbles don’t taste very nice.”

I have really fallen on my feet here. I went out with a friend last night and went for a bit of a wander around the few blocks surrounding my apartment. The area, which seemed nice enough in the day time, if not terribly exciting, had buzzed into life. Within two blocks we came across fifteen or twenty bars. We found one great bar where we each had two lychee mimosas and only paid $20 for the lot. Just around the corner we stopped at another place for a truly brilliant burger, served with sweet potato fries, and a pitcher of frozen margarita for $18, all served by the most flamboyant waiter I have ever come across, who could barely stand still long enough to take our order. As my friend succinctly put it, “I’ll have some of what he’s having.”

I love it here. I really, really love it. I love that I have inadvertently ended up in a really cool neighbourhood. I love that I have already met a whole bunch of amazing people. I love that I have a proper New York fire escape, and I love the shower in my kitchen.

Photo by Peter Ruprecht

I’m terrified, obviously, but currently that is slightly dulled by the chaos of getting ready to leave. As people keep pointing out to me, it doesn’t have to be a complicated process. As one friend succinctly put it, all I actually need are two passports, my wallet, my tickets and my daughter. Apart from the fact that he made no mention of PG tips pyramid bags, I see his point, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable of me to want to be slightly better prepared than that. Poor Ruby has been utterly neglected while I have been sorting everything out. Luckily for me she is brilliant at entertaining herself, but apart from anything else she has been living on a rotation of about four meals for God knows how long now. I don’t remember the last time I prepared any meal other than spaghetti bolognese, pitta bread and hummus or fish fingers and peas. If nothing else I am really looking forward to a whole new array of food supplies to spur me on to create some more inspiring menus! I wonder if cave women had this sort of pressure on them, to do something different each day with the lifetime supply of mammoth meat at their disposal.

I know I don’t need to worry, really. As soon as I get myself set up there I will have all the time in the world to spend with Ruby, and to cook up a storm for her. I’m chomping at the bit to get going now that I am more or less ready. Part of my excitement is purely down to the prospect of getting to live in the same city as my best friend again. Things just simply aren’t the same without her. Skype is a wonderful thing, but it’s just not the same as having a glass of wine and a giggle with your favourite girl. More than anything, to employ a very American turn of phrase, I am psyched to be jetting of on the insane adventure with my baby. I still can’t quite believe I am lucky enough to be able to go on this journey with her. It seems almost sad that she will be too young to remember any of it, but I guess I’ll just have to do that for her. On that note it seems quite fortuitous that my best friend is a photographer!

So, friends, the next time you hear from me I will be a newly installed inhabitant of the city that never sleeps, unless I manage to sneak in a quick snippet on the plane, but I have a sneaky feeling my computer is due to be commandeered by a little girl who has worked out that I have downloaded an entire series of Charlie and Lola from iTunes…..

The phase that we are currently in the thick of is the “I want to do everything by myself” phase. “I want to pour my milk by myself,” inevitably ends with milk-soaked jeans. “I want to cut up my supper by myself” sends mutilated pieces of sausage flying across the room. “I want to chose my clothes by myself” results in a pair of wellies being teamed with a swimsuit and a knitted strawberry hat, and woe betide me if I dare to interfere.

All quite amusing, certainly, but when it comes to things like crossing roads it gets less fun. It also doesn’t help that my daughter is one of the most stubborn, least easily diverted children I have ever come across, and has a spectacular pair of lungs on her which she puts to great use when she doesn’t get her own way about something. As a rule, I have a very low tolerance for screaming hissy-fits, and when I’m at home I tend to employ a selective deafness approach, but when you are actually in the path of oncoming traffic, there is rarely time to negotiate. This is where the tactics from phase one (“No!”) come in. Rather than saying “Hold my hand while we cross the road,” which consistently elicits an autopilot refusal, I have implemented the Offer Alternatives technique: “Are you going to hold my hand while we cross the road, or shall I strap you into the buggy?” works like a charm.

When is comes to eating out I tend to go with a combination of Distraction and Pick Your Battles. When meals at home are refused, that’s that. I would never force her to eat anything, but if she’s not hungry enough for pasta she’s not hungry enough for ice cream either, which in turn, often requires a touch of selective deafness. When we are out, however, it is simply not an option to have her scream the place down. For one thing, I would never be able to go anywhere twice. So this is where I come armed with pens, paper, glue and scissors (the Distraction part), and resign myself to the fact that Ruby having nothing but ice cream for lunch once in a blue moon is really not the worst thing in the world (yep, that would be me Picking My Battles). Anything for an easy life!

I have to admit, though, that Tactical Bribery is my personal favourite. When it gets to nap time and madam has decided she is not going to sleep, I will ask her if she wants to do some painting. Of course the answer is always yes, so I say that she is much too tired to do painting now, but if she has a sleep she can do some painting when she wakes up. It works for lots of things: “If you put all your toys back in the basket, we can sit down and read a story together;” “When I’ve finished brushing your teeth we can go to the swings.” The key is that I only ever promise things that she would be getting anyway, but luckily for me she hasn’t figured this out yet.

So, I guess that if you keep the tactics simple, they can still apply even when the phase changes. I can even see a modified version working on a stroppy teenager, and I’m sure many of you will be shaking your heads at my naïveté, but I am nothing if not optimistic! Obviously, if I were able to claim that my tactics worked all the time, or even that I had the discipline to stick to my own rules consistently, rather than losing my rag and shouting, I would not only be irritatingly smug, but I would probably be very rich too, but of course they don’t, and of course I’m not. And that, my friends is where the large gin and tonic comes in!

After a lot of false starts, I thought that I had hit the jackpot with a one-bedroom apartment in Chelsea, within my budget, and I was holding my breath. Several emails went back and forth between the lessor and me, and I was optimistic, until a few things started raising red flags in my mind. The first thing, which seemed more of a frustration than a reason for suspicion, was that despite asking several times the woman did not give me a phone number. She eventually explained that she had a hearing disability and would rather communicate by email. Fair enough, I thought. The second thing that raised a flag was that she refused to let my friend go round to view the apartment for me until she had received a cash deposit, and from this point we hadbeen going round in circles for a couple of weeks. I refused to part with any cash until the apartment had been viewed, and she refused to arrange for a viewing until I had paid a deposit.

Now, ordinarily, if I had been on my own turf and felt more confident, this would have been enough to send me running for the hills, but for some reason my natural instincts were dulled, and I pursued this apartment for one reason: it was too good to be true. And it was that phrase, eventually, that told me what I needed to know. If something seems too good to be true, it usually is. All the red flags I should have spotted were no match for my optimism, but my senses did, thank god, finally sharpen themselves up and work for me.

So today, after having lunch with my dad and talking it all through I did a bit of detective work. It didn’t take long. I tried googling the lessor, but her name alone didn’t get me anywhere: I got far too many hits, and nothing of any use. What did it though was including the word “scam” in my google search. Suddenly, I hit upon literally dozens of people posting about this woman who had ripped them off. She would insist upon a cash deposit before showing the apartment and, once the money had changed hands, would disappear. The name to watch out for, incidentally, is Dorry Dimos, presumably not a real name. The woman (or man, who knows?) is a phony and will rip you off.

So, I had a lucky escape, but I feel better equipped to side-step the potholes now. I feel like I will be able to spot a rip-off merchant a mile off. I’m not so determined to find a place for the whole six months straight away.  I think I may have found a place for the first month of my stay, which will put me in the significantly stronger position of being able to apartment-hunt once I am actually in the city. And I’m not going to let these little obstacles get me down. I will, by hook or by crook (preferably fewer crooks), make this work. Nolite te bastardes carborundorum.