your thirty-ninth week

Everything about you completely brightened our days.

You were so funny.

You pulled the best faces.

You made great noises.

You gave the most fantastic cuddles.

And now that you had mastered saying "mum-um-um-um" and "da-da-da-dad"

which never failed to make us smile.

We knew that you didn't really know what you were saying yet,

but we liked to think that maybe you did.

Because you often looked at us when you said it.

Plus you would say "dad" when you were playing

but say "mum" when you were tired or sad and wanting cuddles.

We would find you standing up all over the place.

It definitely seemed like you were no longer interested in sitting.

You could crawl really fast

and then when you got where you wanted you would stand up

to get a better view of what was going on.

You would stand up in your cot when you had finished napping

and would call out to let us know,

then grin at us when we looked surprised 

to find you standing up and looking over the bars.

We had been thinking that because you were so good at crawling

that you would wait a bit longer to walk.

But you were quickly learning that you could push your sit-in baby walker around,

and you had done a few stumbling steps while you were at it.

So Mummy rushed out to get you some shoes.

Because you were always pulling socks, shoes or booties

off of your feet

and if you were going to think about walking

we wanted you to get used to shoes.

We got you a very cute pair of denim trainers

and a pair of furry warm boots for the winter.

Seeing you standing up with your new shoes on,

it seemed like your transformation into little boy was complete.

You looked so grown up.

It seemed so strange to think that you were reaching the milestone

where you had been growing out of Mummy's tummy

longer than you were growing in it.

In so many ways it seemed like forever ago

that you were the tiny little baby that we saw on the ultrasound scan

and that we first brought home from hospital as scared newborn parents.

But in other ways

it seemed like just yesterday that Mummy had a huge bump

and you were kicking her in the ribs

and making us so excited with your little wriggles.

Everything had been going at warp speed since you came along.

And it seemed like we were falling in love with a completely different baby every few months.

But we had loved every stage so far

from the vulnerable newborn stage,

to the first smiles

to the stage you were at now,

where you gave us so much back.

It was definitely becoming clear

that you loved us

just as much

as we loved you.