The Night before Two

It has come around so quickly, your second birthday,  I feel like I was still saying 'only just one' just a few weeks ago and now suddenly you are turning two and I can't believe how big you are! You are my last baby and you are leaving the baby days behind rapidly. I was reading the letter I wrote to you one year ago today and it seems like so long ago you were that tiny!

Cora, you look so angelic with your blue eyes and blonde hair but it hides the fierce little girl you actually are.  You are so incredibly smart and so determined.  You know exactly what you want and you know how to get it.  You are so full of personality making us all laugh every day and you are so full of sass making us despair at the same time.  We are already dreading the teenage years.

This was the year you learned to talk, to walk with confidence and run.  You are desperate to scoot like your brothers and I think you will love your birthday present tomorrow! You are caring and your favourite toy is a 'baby' doll. I watched you at playgroup as you sat baby in the jumperoo and made its hands push the buttons.  You love playing Hide and Seek too although your hiding spots need some work and you look adorable covering your eyes shouting ' seven, eight, nine, ready not, come!'

One was the year we ditched the daytime nappies and bought the tiniest pants we could find for you.   It was the year you discovered your love for Blaze and the Monster Machines and the year you and your littlest big brother became partners in crime, intent on ruining my house and driving me crazy!

You are happiest with company but you are only really happy if you have your Mummy and she isn't for sharing.  If your brothers give me cuddles, you come up desperate for one, squeezing your arm in between them and me.  You are definitely a Mummy's girl.

Tomorrow marks two years of breastfeeding and we are still going strong! You don't feed so much in the day anymore and you are sleeping through the night, but you still feed every night before bed and every morning before anything else) and often a couple more times in the day too.

Tomorrow we will be celebrating all day with a little party in the garden for your friends at lunchtime and a bbq in the evening with your family.  I hope you have the best day surrounded by people that love you.

These photos were taken by the awesome Wishes and Wellies when she came to visit us this week.

I am loving getting to know you better as you find your voice, watching you grow and seeing the person you are becoming.  Two is going to be such a fun year! But before we start on that next adventure, I want to pause for a moment to remember how wonderful you are right now.  How you waited up for me tonight so you could fall asleep in my arms. How wild your hair looks as you sleep, spread across your pillow, the way you cuddle Chase close.  I want to remember how you wake up unsure of what is more urgent, coming and checking on me, and going to see Finn.  I want to remember how needed I still feel by you in every sense.  The way you angrily say 'self' if I try and help you with something you don't need help with, the way you shout Now with such urgency and your bartering 'Milk first' every time I ask you to do something.  You will never be this small again, the clocks will move forward and so will you but I never want to forget this wonderful stage in your life.

Baby girl, you are more loved than you will ever know

xx

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Nun-Night One Year Old

To my gorgeous boy,

It was a whole year ago that I wrote you this letter and I would never have believed how much can change in just 52 weeks.  You are now a walking, talking toddler with the cheekiest smile and the most beautiful eyes.  You are a fantastic big brother, including Archie in everything you do and you love to make him laugh.  You are still and will always be, my baby, but you are growing up before my eyes.

Your language has come on so much in the last year and you are now talking in sentences (non-stop if we are at home).  The baby talk is slowly phasing out but you still mispronounce the odd word and I love to hear you speak.  You know your colours, shapes and numbers and have an obsessions with puzzles.  You let us know your mind and it is wonderful being able to communicate with you so well now.

Despite having a broken leg that is stopping you walking, you are getting around just fine and it has taken you until now to perfect the art of bum-shuffling and crawling.  Despite having to spend weeks inside and having to watch your friends run around and play, you have not complained and I have never been prouder of you.  You brightened everyone's day in hospital with your smiles and laughs and kept me going even when things were tough.  The nurses loved you, the children loved you and we had so many visitors, it is clear to see how loved you are.

Your personality shows through more and more every day and I love learning about you.  You couldn't love your fruit more, one bowl of strawberries is never enough and you will often pick a satsuma over chocolate..  Your new love of airplanes and rockets mean that when you have finished with a toy you yell 'blast off' as you pretend to shoot it up into the air and no matter what shapes we make with Duplo, they are always airplanes..  

Your energy is infectious and everything is a potential adventure.  You can find a puddle to jump in, despite it not having rained for a week and we stop to examine leaves, trees and stones.  You help me see the beauty in the world around me when it passed me by before.  You make me appreciate what I have and the things we have done and you make me strive to be the best mother and the best me that I can be.

I want to show you things, teach you things but you are not even two yet and it is you that is showing and teaching me.  It was always you and me, (and Daddy at the weekends) but now we have another little person in our team and you are showing and teaching him too.

Somedays I look at you and see the child that you have become, the sociable confident little boy.  Other days you remind me that you are still only so young and when you cuddle into my lap and suck your thumb, you are still my little baby.

Tomorrow you will wake up and be 2.  Tomorrow I will wake up and be the mother of a 2 year old and baby boy, I am so happy that I am your mama.  

Your floppy blonde hair, your big blue eyes, your totally edible chubby cheeks, 16 teeth and still the chunkiest thighs I have ever seen.  There is so much I want to remember from this past year and I am so glad I have it recorded here.  

Sleep tight my gorgeous one year old, for tomorrow is a big day.

Love Mummy

xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

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Nun-Night Nought Year Old

To my gorgeous boy,

Tomorrow is just another day - only it is not.  Tomorrow we will be celebrating it being a year since you came into this world with your long legs and loud cry.  A year of tears, tantrums, smiles and cuddles.  A year unlike any other and one that I would go back and relive in a heart beat.

It is amazing to think how much has changed.  Once upon a time you were a helpless baby, feeding non-stop and only happy when on mummy's chest.  After a month everyone kept telling me they had not yet seen your eyes as even then you loved your sleep.  Suddenly you started to be awake for periods of the day.  You followed me with your eyes and started smiling that beautiful gummy smile.

One day old

Now you are a curious, mischevious and still super loud child.  Barely a baby but not yet a toddler.  You love to explore with your hands and mouth and push yourself forward in the pushchair so you can see round the sides.  You are happiest when you have everyone in the room's attention and you have never struggled to get it.  You may not be crawling or walking yet but you have no problem getting to things you want and are cruising round the furniture.  

You are

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