me and mine {february}

Daddy is loving

* watching House of Cards

* catching up with old friends for dinner.

* going to the Sealife Centre.

* playing Fifa on the Xbox.

* eating rainbow cupcakes for the beautiful boy's birthday.

Mummy is loving

* taking weekly portraits of the children.

* having a day at the coast for the little man's birthday.

* the beautiful boy saying "I love you for always Mummy".

* how incredibly smiley, happy and content the beautiful girl is.

* a lovely day in Cambridge with good friends.

The beautiful boy is loving

* being three.

* learning to ride his bike.

* anything to do with letters and the alphabet.

* eating fish fingers and mash.

* counting and reading different numbers.

The beautiful girl is loving

* her fairy toys.

* squealing, screaming and generally making excited noises.

* playing with spoons.

* chocolate.

* stroking her ragdoll Blossom's face at bedtime.

     

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out of the mouths of babes {february}

beautiful boy: "Are you going swimming Mummy?"

Mummy: "Yes I am."

beautiful boy: "Right then, I need a cuddle and kiss, right now."

Nanny: "Do you need the toilet?"

beautiful boy: "I'm sorry Nanny. I'm just too busy."

Mummy: "Come and get your dinner."

beautiful boy: "This isn't dinner, this is lunch."

Mummy: "No it's dinner time. You're having food that you normally have at lunch time. But it's still dinner."

beautiful boy: "No it is lunch. This is my lunch plate."

Mummy: "Did you have a good nap?"

beautiful boy: "Not yet."

Mummy: "Not yet?"

beautiful boy: "No. I'm still sleepy."

"Mummy is going to go out on her broomstick."

(Charming!!!)

"I love my cowboy bed, Cowboy Mummy."

While we were all sat in the car:

beautiful boy: "Daddy, what is that?"

Daddy: "That's Tesco."

beautiful boy: "Yes, it is."

beautiful boy: "Mummy?"

Mummy: "Yes?"

beautiful boy: "That is Tesco over there."

"I don't like risotto. I just want rice for dinner."

"Mmmm, pink juice tastes delicious in a grown up glass."

Mummy: "Please do not push your sister. It's not very kind and it could hurt her."

beautiful boy: "But Mummy, she really hurt my sock."

"I feel poorly Mummy. I need some medicine. (Brief pause while I administer said medicine.) No, I need more Mummy. I don't feel any better."

5

the best of friends

Friends are precious things.

Something to appreciate and be thankful for.

The best ones make your life happier

just by being in it.

7

him and her {week eight}

he is still trying to chance his luck a lot of the time

but is (dare I say it) pushing our buttons a little less,

and he's saying "I always love you" all the time, which makes us melt.

she is saying "mummy" a lot,

is giggling constantly and at the craziest things,

and is absolutely loving trips to the park to go on the swings.

18

seventeen months new

You were our absolute ray of sunshine.

2

me and you {february}

When a relationship is new

its all about romance and butterflies,

about that passionate love

and wanting to be together all the time.

You are confidants, you are lovers,

you are constantly holding hands, constantly in contact with the other.

It's like the world revolves around the two of you,

and it's amazing,

and it's a bit like living in a real life fairy tale.

But as you grow together,

and you add to your unit of two and become a family,

the roles change.

And just the other day we were talking about the fact

that a lot of the time we are house mates,

the majority of the time we're team mates,

most of the time we're best friends,

and very occasionally, we're still the lovers we've always been.

And while the roles may be different,

and our world may turn with a different twosome at it's centre these days,

we still know that together we're better at all those roles.

Together we can do more, be more, love more, be happier.

And even with our grown up lives,

and our grown up responsibilities,

when we are together we still feel like those young students

having a whirlwind romance,

that we never planned would last the year,

but that's somehow still standing after all this time.

19

making believe

In the last few months,

make believe has become a much bigger part of play in this house.

It's like my little man's imagination exploded overnight,

and suddenly all those books we'd been reading him

started coming to life.

5

tough times

Parenting isn't an easy path to tread,

we know that when we sign up.

We know there will be sleepless nights,

we know there will be tough decisions to make sometimes,

we know that our children will be the best things to ever happen to us

but that there will also be challenges and hard times.

18

him and her {week seven}

he is full of the cutest and most loving compliments,

would watch Tinkerbell DVDs back to back if we'd let him,

and says the words "Mummy" and "Daddy" about a million times a day.

she really is the cutest, smiliest little lady on the planet,
will attempt to climb practically anything,
and insists on laughing whenever her brother does anything he shouldn't.

24

his third birthday

On Friday 7th February 2014

my beautiful little man turned three.

And special days out together

to celebrate being another year older,

are kind of becoming a family tradition for us.

Our beautiful boy had a great one

and we spent the day pinching ourselves

that our first born baby had got so big so quickly.

  

13

choo choo

I've confessed our love for wooden toys before now,

we have a house full of them.

All the lovely classic wooden toys you can think of,

we probably have them,

and then some besides.

I can't seem to resist them.

But one thing which had eluded our collection

was a proper wooden train set.

 

7

siblings {february}

The thing I love the most about watching my two children together,

is thinking of where their relationship might take them as they grow up.

I love the fact that for their whole lives 

they will have a person that they've shared so much history with,

someone who I hope will just 'get them' like no one else does.

Someone who they can tease and joke with, 

someone they can put in their place when needed,

and someone who will always be there for them.

"Be nice to your siblings; 

they are the best link to your past 

and the people most likely to stick with you in the future."

I think these lyrics from Baz Luhrmann's Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen) sum it up perfectly.

There is something beautiful about the nostalgia that siblings can share,

and the support they can give one another. 

I know that my brother and I fall into old but familiar roles when we are together,

and there is something really comforting about that.

And that is what I love about seeing my two together right now,

the beginnings of that bond.

The push and pull of negotiating a space together,

the searching for one another and delighting in each other,

those cheeky glances and moments of shared laughter,

which all seem so new right now,

but which will be the backbone of their childhoods.

65

him and her {week six}

he is three

and he is pushing our buttons, driving us insane and then melting our hearts in quick succession,

and just loves to run around and around and around.

she is at this beautiful, vulnerable stage,

where when she comes across something new she looks to us to see how to react,

and she pulls the cheekiest little face when she does something she knows she shouldn't.

30

happy third birthday beautiful boy

Your last two birthday flew round at a heck of a rate,

but my goodness this one seems to have crept up on me

even faster still.

You're three!

THREE!!!

That little tiny baby boy,

who I was terrified and elated to bring home from the hospital,

who taught me how to be a Mummy,

and showed me about a love I never could have imagined,

that tiny baby boy is three.

That tiny baby boy is certainly not tiny anymore,

although he does still like to be my baby occasionally

when he's wrapped up in a towel fresh from the bath

and he insists on being rocked and cuddled like he was all the time ago.

For a split second, it's almost like I'm right back there.

But I wouldn't trade that baby for the amazing little boy you have become

and are becoming more and more with every day.

You blow me away daily

with the things that you've learnt,

with the details you notice,

with your incredible memory,

with your understanding and kindness and sensitivity,

with your big chocolate eyes,

with your gorgeous cheeky smile,

and with the fact I get to raise you and love you and call you mine.

You make me prouder than I could ever have thought possible.

I said it on your first and second birthdays,

but it's still one hundred percent true;

you rock my world.

So happy birthday my super cool, super amazing little man.

I love you with all my heart.

x x x

7

your thirty-sixth month

Three years had past us by in a flash.

2

him and her {week five}

he seems to growing like a weed and has the appetite to match,

is a puzzle completing master,

and makes up little songs the whole day long.

she is quite simply a little ray of sunshine,

with a cheeky smile and bags of charm,

and is all about the dollies.

15