forty-three weeks new

We were racing towards your birthday now.

And it was so scary to think how fast your first year was going.

You had more charm and more personality

with every single day that passed.

Such a funny little girl instead of a little baby.

You were a really vocal little thing

and you loved to babble and chatter

both to yourself or to us.

You also yelled, and we mean yelled,

for every single mouthful at meal times.

You really did love your food,

and as soon as the spoon was out of your mouth

or you had put the last morsel of food in your mouth,

you were yelling or growling for the next one.

You had an extremely loud squealy scream on you

which you liked to use to have screeching conversations with your brother.

It would get some loud

but the two of you would laugh so much

that we just used to let you do it

and hoped that the neighbours didn't mind too much.

We had been waiting for your first words for a little while

and had been listening out during your chatty periods

for some real, proper words.

We had been practising "mum-um-um" and "da-da-da" with you

and you loved to join in.

Your repertoire of noises also included lots of 

"yea-yea-yea" and "na-na-na" as well

which we thought was probably a consequence of having a big brother

with a particular fondness of saying "yes" and "no" to you.

Then all of a sudden you came out with your first word;

"Daddo".

Okay, so it wasn't technically a real word,

but we sort of liked it.

And it made Daddy's day.

Especially as you chose to say it when he was home to hear it.

We had been having some glorious sunny weather

so we had got the big paddling pool out at Nanny and Pops' house.

You watched your brother play in it for a while

before we decided to give you your first splash.

You weren't very keen to begin with,

which surprised us given that you were such a water baby at bath times.

But we think it was just the shock of the cool water on your hot skin at first,

because you quickly warmed to it,

and were rolling around in the water

and splashing and laughing like it was the best fun ever.