but I sometimes strain muscles trying not to laugh.

A variety of comments by Hugo lately:

“Mummy, popcorn is nice and warm, like sand in the desert”.

And on being told to be careful eating some hard food “Mum, I can just crunch it. I have very good teeth you know”.

Last week we had a small electrical issue with one of the power circuits so we didn’t have television for a couple of days. When I picked him up from pre-school on Thursday, the Director told me that he’d asked her to set him up a pretend television and he sat and watched it for quite some time :O

He had a haircut on Saturday (this picture is, obviously, pre-haircut). I am so, SO proud of how good he was for the haircut. It was totally worth the aeroplane we bought him from the hobby shop afterwards. (picture of spunky haircut to come).

And what a year! We’ve had ups and downs and lots of laughs, and all of a sudden we’ve reached this milestone. It feels like yesterday and forever ago that you were brand new.

You have started standing up on purpose, and you seem quite impressed with yourself for doing it, but still haven’t taken that first step. Your love of music is becoming more and more apparent as you delight in dancing along to anything with a vague melody (even awful top 20 stuff on the radio) … you laugh joyfully when we sing your favourite “”Hello” song and do all the actions.

There is no doubt at all that Hugo is the centre of your universe. You follow him all day long, usually prompting cries of “Sophie’s BUGGING ME Mum!” I continue to be surprised how different and then again, how similar you and he are.

And so I keep remembering your birth day, your special story about the day you were born, and I wonder if I will think of it every year, preserving and treasuring it in my heart. One day when you’re bigger I’ll tell it to you, how amazing and special that moment of your arrival was, the feeling of joy in the room, in our hearts as we just stared at you in awe and thankfulness.

Thank you for a great year, little girl … I hope we have as much fun for the next year!

We went to Symbio again last weekend.

The duck was scary! At first I thought he was cute and tame as he waddled up close, until he started a frenzied attack on my shoes :O Admittedly, these are shoes that smell so bad that I have to keep them outside, so I probably had no business wearing them out in public. I guess he took offense at the smell … or maybe he took a liking to it, and was looking for a mid morning snack. Either way, we got out of his way pretty quickly.