Dear Beatrice

Dear Beatrice,

Happy 1^st Birthday my little love! I truly cannot believe how fast this year has gone, my baby is one today.

It has been a big learning curve year for me, getting used to life with two children and getting to know you and your own likes and dislikes. You have made it as easy as any baby could though as you have been a very happy, mild mannered baby.

You have won hearts everywhere you go, with your big brown eyes and your constant smile. You are completely treasured by Mummy, Daddy and Xavier and we just could not imagine life without you.

I am so happy to call myself your Mummy. I love that when you are tired or upset you find your way to my arms for comfort; you lie in my arms, so still, sucking your favourite thumb. No matter what I am doing with you, be it reading you a book or carrying you off for a nappy change, I cannot help but kiss your beautiful face and soft hair.

Whenever Daddy comes home from work you just light up and if you can hear his voice in the house you crawl as fast as you can to find him. He is completely putty in your hands too, little girl. Everyone can see in his eyes just how much he loves his little girl.

Xavier has found a best-friend in you. You two play together whenever you are awake & he is quite lost without you when you nap! No one cheers you up quite like Xavier. While I may cuddle you to stop your tears, Xavier has but to start singing “Happy and you know it” or dance a silly dance for you and suddenly the two of you are in fits of laughter together.

You have a way of making us all laugh, your current favourite being to show us your muscles by clenching your fists and gritting your teeth. We are all in hysterics and you and Xav play this game together for lengths of time all through the day.

It is lovely to watch you become more and more part of our family; as you have grown more and more competent at playing and moving around at will, I often have to search the house for you and find you happily playing with some toys (usually Xavier’s!) in one room or another. Your favourite things to play with right now are an etch-a-scetch (or any pens, pencils or textas left lying about) and a big box of plastic food which you feed to me, Xavier or any toy nearby.

You love reading books, although prefer turning the pages faster than I can read the words. Your favourite books are lift the flap ones, I am amazed how gentle you are and don’t tear the flaps.

I never tire of dressing you up in cute girly clothes, although most of your clothes are filthy now from either you independently feeding yourself or have filthy knee marks from you crawling everywhere. You also already love clothes, emptying your clothes drawers and playing with the contents whenever opportunity strikes.

You have been quite a good sleeper, although you peaked at 14 weeks when you would sleep 12-13 hours straight through the night. That didn’t last for too long and by 6 months you were up every few hours! Now at 1 year old you have two naps of about 1 hour 40 mins each and sleep 11-12 hours at night with one or two very quick wake ups for milk during that time.

You still drink quite a lot of ‘milk from Mum’ and I have no idea when you will decide to wean from me. You have a feed as soon as you wake in the morning, another at about 9.30 before your morning nap and then again at 1.30 before your afternoon nap. You have just given up your 4.30 one, so the next one isn’t til 7.30 before bed. You still wake for milk through the night once or twice too!

You do like food, although eat small quantities. Your favourite foods are from the protein family, with ham being the hands down winner! You eat 3 courses for dinner. At about 4.30 you start getting peckish so we sometimes sit outside on the swings with Xavier and each eat a mandarin fresh from the tree. When I am making dinner you want second course so I will steam you some veggies to eat while I cook. Your favourite used to be broccoli, but lately you can’t go by peas and will happily eat half a cup of them picking them up one by one from your highchair bowl. When we eat dinner you always eat what we are eating too (third course!). You have always fed yourself finger food and lately you have been getting very good at feeding yourself sloppy foods with a spoon.

Today on your first birthday you have 7 teeth (4 at the top and 3 at the bottom). You haven’t fussed TOO much as they cut, although you do drool a lot and get high temperatures for a few days as each tooth comes through.

You have quite a vocabulary, although it is the ‘only a Mother can understand’ type as yet. Your first ‘word’ was Big Brother (bababa), followed closely by Fish (fsh) and Bird (ba-d). You also love pointing out Babies (ba-ba) wherever we go.

You are quite the little Mummy, adoring the home corner at playgroup and love playing at feeding your dolls (or Mummy) already! For your birthday Daddy restored a vintage 1950’s pram and Mummy made a hood for it and blankets for your dollys. You love it and we know whenever you play with it as we can hear ‘bababa, bababa’ as you tend to your ‘baby’.

Beatrice, you have already given our family so much joy, happiness and laughter. We are so blessed to have you in our lives, our sweet girl. I look forward to seeing what this next year will bring and know that with your smiling face as part of our family of four, life will continue to be this wonderful.

Love,

Mummy