How to wake a mummy.

To my little Bean,

So much time has passed since I last wrote to you, so much has happened, you have grown and changed so much! But instead of being oerwhelmed with the thousands of amazing things you can now do and with having to tell you about the kind of little boy you are as a two-and-a-bit year old, I'm just going to write you a short one about just one beautiful thing you are doing right now, that I hope I will never forget.

This is usually how things end up when I try to have a nap :) 

A few months ago, we started to wake you from your naps after a designated time. Some days it is easy, some days it is tough. I always strive to do it when you are in a phase of light sleep, where a simple, 'Hello, beautiful boy!' or a stroke of your cheek might be enough to rouse you. Sometimes, though, you are very hard to wake. On these days, I gently take off your car blankie, stroke your hair, speak to you very quietly about all the wonderful things we will do that afternoon, gently draw circles on your cheek in the same way that I remember my mum doing to me... And I sing you a little song. Usually it is the song that I just came up with one day when you were very little and has grown and grown into a full song ('My beautiful blue-eyed boy, Oh how I love you, I really really do...' etc), sometimes it is Bob Marley (no idea why...), sometimes it is a song from Playschool.

You, gently helping your puppy dog go to sleep, humming a lullaby.

Each and every morning, now, you end up in our bed. Often you have been there, sandwiched between your daddy and I for a couple of hours, but occasionally you wait until a very respectable time before you pitterpatter out of your room and climb on in. When you decide that it is time for me to wake up, you start stroking my arm. Very very gently, from my shoulder all the way to my fingertips. You whisper to me, 'time to get up' and sweep the hair from my face, brushing my cheeks, occasionally sticking your finger up my nose (you are two, after all). It is the most perfectly beautiful way for me to wake in the mornings, and is absolute testament to the gentle and loving boy that you are. You then quietly whisper about how we can play trains and aeroplanes, about how it is time for Mummy, Daddy, Ruben and Baby Victor (our friend's have a little baby named Victor, and no matter how many times we correct you, this little baby in my belly is called 'Victor' to you!) to have breaky, and it is time to get up. Every single time, you put a smile on my face.



You are just such a beautiful boy and I could not love you an ounce more.

Love Mummy.

Enjoying You

Hello there, my little boy blue,

I was writing to a good friend today about how much joy you give me lately, and I figured I should tell you too! It really seems to me that from the moment you were born, life with you (and you yourself!) just keeps getting better and better, more and more fun. Really truly ruly.

I watch you run your funny little run, where you run side to side, sashaying down the hallway.

I watch you laugh your big bellied, full bodied laugh when I become a tickle monster, telling me to stop and then asking for more.

I watch your wonderful little sideways grin when you tell a joke, calling a fire truck a bus, an apple a pear, a jumper pants, just so that I will laugh, call you silly and tickle you. 

I watch you playing with your cars or your trains, singing Happy Birthday, or Happy Talk, or Heads and Shoulders, or Rockabye Baby in your own wonderful, beautiful way. 

There are times when I can't take my eyes off our interlocking hands when we are walking down the street, knowing your hand will never be that small again.

I watch you sleep, your perfect little legs splayed apart, your five dummies scattered around you, your little koala shirt riding up to reveal the whitest, softest little belly, rising and falling.

I just want to breathe all of you in, every day, and not forget what you are like right at this moment.

I love you.
Love Mummy

Times, they are a-changing.

Possum! You are TWO!

Three days old

We even managed to celebrate your two-ness, amidst the absolute chaos of moving house. But until the adult you approves of me plastering naked photos of you all over here, there are very few internetable photos as evidence of this... You and clothes are simply not friends at the moment, you see. I do my best to get pants (or at least undies!) on you by the time somebody arrives at our door, and anything else is a real bonus! But really, who wouldn't want to run around blowing and popping bubbles with no clothes on... I get it... :) Now you sing happy birthday to the cornflakes, to your trains, to your bobby car, to a banana...

Two years old! 

While you don't seem to be such a fan of clothes right now, you definitely seem to love our new house. Never before have I been so aware that my own happiness is dependent on yours. What if you had hated it? If you spent the whole time crying and begging for our old house, unable to sleep in your bed whatsoever... what would we have done? Instead, you love your new room, which is now big enough to hold a bunch of your toys, and where you will happily play on your own for minutes at a time! Multiples of minutes! In a totally different room to me! Wowsers. And while listening to Komm Sing Mit for 45 minutes, you will play with your cars and trains and stickers, quietly singing along, totally independently. This has me gobsmacked, when only a couple of weeks ago I needed to hold your hand while you played with your playdough (quite a feat). I think perhaps it is because you always know where I am here. Everything is open, you can always see me, you feel safe.

Your new style of play keeps you VERY busy! 

Every morning, I almost cry from the overwhelming love that I feel for you when you quietly pop out of bed, pat pat pat pat next door to our room, tentatively stand at the door and say, "Mummy?" and wait for me to pull the covers back. Then in you come, snuggle your little body in so tightly against mine (with Arnold, your car cushion, Ubu the dog and as many dummies as you can hold), and close your eyes. This morning, I whispered a little "Good morning" in your ear, and you whispered it back to me. I then whispered "I love you" and you whispered it back. My goodness, it must be simply impossible for one human being to love something more than I love you.

It was a pretty good morning in all, my love, because you also lifted up my shirt and gave the baby in my belly a kiss and a little gentle rub. Each morning I take my prenatal vitamins (breakfast for the baby) and you have also started to want to take tablets for the 'Baby in Ruben's belly'. Lucky that an oat puff is a decent tablet substitute to you! You are going to be the most beautiful big brother, my beautiful boy.

I love you so much, little one. And still, every day, you amaze me.
Love Mummy.

23.5 months: "What's tha-at?"

Hello my beautiful boy.

You are such a little boy now, it blows my mind. You are so far away from the little baby that you were just six months ago... You are almost two years old, and I fear that when you turn two, life will be utterly crazy and I will not be able to write to you. We are moving house on your birthday! Your Daddy is away for the five days leading up to it, and I am away for the four days directly after it, so... yes, wish us luck...

But I wanted to tell you about the little person that you have become, the way that I used to do your monthly updates during your first year.

Things You CAN DO NOW!
You are potty trained! Much to our absolute shock and awe. It was no drama whatsoever and accidents are now very very rare. You sometimes will even go on the big toilet if we are out in a restaurant! Amazing! You are also now sleeping in a big boy bed - though it is just your cot with the rails taken away. You love being able to climb into bed when you want to, and we love that you regulate yourself this way so well. There is also the language explosion! Counting to 'twentwy!' and constantly asking, "What's tha-at?" and doing your best to imitate our answer. It amazes me how you can then remember if after asking only once! You are a little parrot, copying everything everyone says, like, "That was a big one!" and "Don't worry, Grandpa.". You are mixing your German and your English with things such as, "Flugzeug in the sky!" and "Jump on the Bahnhof?"

Ice-cream headache!

Things You Love:
Talking. You are a chatterbox, when there are not too many people around! Singing the Crocodile song, Guten Morgen and Mister Frog. Jumping in puddles, playing fussball with Daddy, jumping on the cushions once we put them on the floor, watching Chuggington (only the one with the monkeys), going to the farm to look at the tractors (you couldn't care less about the cows...). And yoghurt and cheese. Still. You are a little obsessed with the new gelateria that just opened in the middle of the village too... but are mostly very happy getting to look through the window!

Things You Hate:
Balloons, tunnels (in the playground. On the train they are cool!), loud noises and people, crowds, unpredictability




Who You Are:

Little one, I could not be more proud to be your mama. You are a quiet boy, a very very gentle soul who can also be incredibly cheeky. You are affectionate and very cautious, making sure you have really assessed any situation or person before you put any trust in them whatsoever (like making eye contact). When we are with our friends, you are in your element, but there can't be too many people at once. I think your birthday party, when we get around to it (?!) is going to have to be a pretty small affair for you to actually have a good time! From the first month of your life, I have always written that you are a very sensitive boy and a real thinker, and that has not changed. But now you make me giggle hysterically too.

I love you, my big boy!
Love Mummy.

Beans and Lentils

Dear Beanie,

I've been waiting quite a while now to write you this letter... I have half drafted it in my head during many early morning insomniac hours, and during these past eight weeks, its content has changed a lot.

You're going to be a big brother, you see! Writing that makes my stomach flip-flop and makes me go all wibbly wobbly, because I'm pretty scared about the whole thing, to be honest. I'm scared about a lot of things, and from what I hear, my fears are pretty normal... which I suppose is some consolation! Last friday, I had the twelve week ultrasound of the little lentil here inside my belly, and when I actually saw a real baby-looking baby turning around, somersaulting and moving its little arms and legs, I really started to believe it. For the first time. Twelve weeks is a long time to not really believe that you are pregnant...

The experience this time is so different to the last, when I was pregnant with you. For starters, I have a pregnancy journal that I kept with you, and I wrote in it very often, discussing all my dreams and desires for you, my fears and expectations of motherhood, all the things that were changing around me... being pregnant was all that I could think about. I wasn't officially working though (though I was spending many hours each day writing), and I had the luxury of being able to obsess and dream about you in there. Now, with this little lentil, I am trying very hard to spend at least one minute in the morning and two minutes in the evening focusing on my belly, focusing not on you, little bean, but on this new life growing inside of me. I keep meaning to start a journal, but not believing you are pregnant kind of makes it tough! I vow to start writing to the little lentil in the next few days though.

Things will have to change, and change will have to be pretty dramatic. You are my whole world at the moment... I try to remain balanced with sport and writing and other things to keep my sense of self, but really, you are my world. That is all that I have known since you were born, and that is all that you know. I am scared of how this will change, of how having a lentil will take me away from you, will stop me from being exactly what you need, because I just won't be able to be everything you need anymore. Already, things are different. I can't pick you up (you are SO heavy!) when you really need it. I can carry you sometimes, but not often. I can't carry you up all those stairs to our apartment, plus the shopping and whatever hoo-ha I also needed to bring (nappies, food, buckets and spades, spare pants, water bottle, etc), because my shoulder, my back, my heart and my lungs just seriously can't do it right now. So that means that no matter how tired or hungry or sad and in need of me that you are, we battle battle battle every time. This makes me sad... Yes, you need to learn that I can't do everything for you, you need to learn to be independent, etc etc etc, but there is a time and a place, and I miss being able to judge when is an appropriate time to teach you this lesson, and when it is better to just take you upstairs and put you to bed.

I am scared that you will resent the little lentil because it will take me away from you. Though you are an incredibly gentle and loving boy to other babies, and you have never shown any signs of jealousy if I am holding a friend's baby, I think it is only natural that it will happen, and I don't know what I will do when it does. I just hope that I also won't feel that I have been taken away from you. I just can't fathom what it will be like to have another child in my life, how I could possibly love them like I love you, and how I could possibly feel like I am doing enough and being enough when there are two of you to spread myself amongst.

I must admit that those first newborn months scare the pants off me too. I was definitely a floundering mess with you when you were so teeny, dealing with all that stress of our failed breastfeeding journey, and I don't know what I'll do this time, how I'll face those challenges, and how I'll do it all with your bubbly little toddler face around too. I know you'll cheer me up, though, that is your number one super power!

 All of this is not exactly super positive and excitable, is it?! But I suppose my letters to you have always been very honest, and it is important to me that I express how I feel to you while I am feeling it. I know that these feelings will change as the weeks roll on and my belly gets bigger, and already I am having twinges of being less scared and more excited about the whole thing. For example, those moments when you come up to my tummy, lift my shirt and very gently rub your hands over me, repeating that there is a baby in mummy's belly... that is when I envisage a beautiful life with two beautiful children who are loving towards each other, and who just have fun together. What more could I ask for?

We are hunting for a new apartment, my love, and I feel that once we have a new place, I will be less scared and more settled, with room in my mind and my heart to get super excited about this crazy new life that will be coming very soon! I will stop thinking about the difficulties of stairs with a toddler and a newborn. I will stop thinking about how I will have to squash your desires to explore and to be an adventurer, because it isn't 'the right time' to go outside right now -- we are trying to find a place with the outside right there and ready for you, anytime you want it. We will find a community with people and children all around us, where you will make friends with neighbours and we will build a new support network. Even imagining that is exciting to me!

I don't know what will happen to this blog, how it will change, what it will morph into, with a little lentil on the scene. I won't have much time, that's for sure! But these first three months of pregnancy have been rough, to say the least, so at least that is an introduction for how crazy things might become!

I could not love you more, my little one (I admit it, there's a little tear!).

Love Mummy.

Meeting Arnold

Dear Beanie,

There was a very very special parcel that arrived in the mail for you the other day. It was a parcel from your Nanny in Australia. She sent a couple of pairs of shorts (it is very handy to have someone who sends end-of-season sale items at the start of our season!), some easter eggs (of which you had one and went TOTALLY bananas asking for more! Chocolate is a very rare treat for you!), and Arnold.

Meeting Arnold in the flesh for the first time

Arnold is the first ever doll that your Nanny has knitted. You and I have been watching him grow and change over Skype for the past few months, and you became quite obsessed with him, always asking for Arnold the moment Nanny popped up on the screen, and often asking me if we could 'Call Arnold'.

Arnold LOVES dancing!

But Arnold wasn't meant for you. Arnold was meant to be sent to Africa as part of this amazing project that sends handmade dolls to African children. Since Arnold's completion, he has gotten a couple of siblings, but you've never really shown an interest in them like you have in him. I know it would have been a tough decision for Nanny to send him to you, who is in no way starved for toys, instead of sending him to Africa, but WOW WOW WOW your complete and utter joy at finding him inside that package...

But one day, Arnold will find his way to Africa... so long as you don't love all of the stuffing out of him first!

I love you, little boy. And I love your Nanny too! And you love Arnold.
Love Mummy.

Trusting You

Good morning, little bean!

I think one of my absolute favourite things in the world is when you look at me and say, 'Good morning, darling!'. Coming in close second is when you giggle your little head off and say 'Gesundheit!' when I sneeze. Could you be any more loveable?

Seems I'm not the only one that loves you! 

The longer that I am a mother -- the longer that you have existed in this world -- the more that I am learning to trust you. It is a wonderful feeling, to realise that you are such a good self-regulator (you have actually started to tell us when it is bedtime, and you go into your room, sit on the chair and ask for your book!), and that I can stop worrying so much about what I am doing, the impacts of my decisions, the terrible five-year fall-out of letting you go to sleep with a bottle for those two nights...

For instance:

- Sometimes you go a week, it seems, without touching a vegetable. I can try to trick you or disguise them in any number of exotic ways, but you see through me. I am learning that instead of stressing about this, I just keep putting them in front of you. And then, around about once a week, you have a total fruit and vegetable GORGE. Purees, soups, muffins, fresh, whole and chopped, grated, in quiche, in waffles, in pasta... I just have to let you be.

- You 'should' (ugh that word makes me shudder) be having about 500ml of milk now, and not from a bottle. Some days you have only 150. Some days you seem to have about a litre. Some days you have none at all in the night. Some days you have it ALL in the night. I know now that you have your reasons. When you are teething badly, it somehow helps. And that's okay by me. Whatever gets us through.

A cute photo... just because... So serious!

- Some days you don't want to walk. We will go out and you will remain entirely in the pram, never wanting to explore, not wanting to play at the playground, not wanting to chase after that puppy. Instead of thinking about how this will impact our night, and how you need to exert energy so that you will sleep, I just have to leave you be. I know that there are some days where I'd give the world for my mummy to push me around while I just zone out and watch the birds.

- You get very overwhelmed by a lot of people. I am learning that instead of always trying to do 'what is good for you' and what I think 'will be fun', I should let you decide what will be fun. So now we don't go to the Monday morning krabbelgruppe (playgroup?) here, as it has ballooned to about thirty people, and it is pretty clear that you don't want to be there. Now I ask you if you'd like to go, and you say very clearly, 'NO krabbelgruppe! NO!' I suppose this is the same lesson as when we stopped swimming. Now instead, we focus on catching up with friends and socialising with kids in smaller groups in an unstructured way. You enjoy this so much more, which means that I do too.

Kisses with one of your favourite friends

We've all been in struggle town a bit lately, my love. But the Spring sunshine (I love that you now declare it a sunshiny day!) is bringing life back into our household, the snowdrops are well and truly blooming, and we are all shaking off the cobwebs of grey foggy days. And you always bring a smile to my face, little one.

I love you!
Love Mummy.

1, 2, 3, 4, SIX!

Dear Beanie,

We spend so much time giggling together lately. There can be really no more beautiful sound in this world than your giggle. In fact, when your Daddy was tickling you last night, we reminded each other that we need to always remember your toddler giggles.

Your first proper ice-cream, Nutella flavour, made for lots of giggles!

Your favourite game to play with me at the moment is 'Counting'! You will look at me intently and say, 'One!', then you wait wait wait until I say, 'One!'. We then race through two, three and four, then skip five. You will always say six, and I will say five, again and again until you giggle like a maniac. Eventually I give in and say six, and we rumble on through to 'TENTENTEN!'

And repeat. Again, again and again. I have no idea, really, where you learnt to count. This is not something that we have been 'working on' with you whatsoever, but I suppose little things like occasionally counting all the little Play-dough balls that you make (Nanny started doing this with you when she visited, I think!), or counting the babies on the back page of Peepo, or counting down from five as you jump off the couch... I suppose all of this sticks.

I was chatting to a friend about this recently and she said that so many toddlers have an issue with five. I wonder why that is?! Either they will count to five then stop, or, like you, skip it altogether. Such weird creatures you are!

I love you, little boy. You are almost 22 months now, which is almost two, which makes me boggle... I love you all the time.

Love Mummy.

The Swiss Farm Experience

Dear Bubbaloo,

We had a one day crossover recently where all three of us were healthy! Amazing! And it was gorgeous weather and a Sunday... woah... so of course we went to the farm.

Everything about this day was perfect. The weather, animals, the food, the fact that it was one day before my birthday, and the fact that all three of us were in such good moods. We always talk about needing to do more and experience more, but more often that not we are always just so insanely tired... hmm, whose fault could that be?

The highlights of the day for me:

1. Watching you as the smallest kid amongst a bunch of bigger kids, all throwing yourselves about in the hay bails. Often this is the kind of thing that would overwhelm you and you'd want to just stand and watch, but you jumped right in there this time and had a ball!


2. Sitting in the sunshine overlooking the lake, watching hot air balloons over the mountains, eating farm-fresh produce and cake. (How can I not have taken a photo of this?!)

3. Watching you giggle your little head off at the goats. You got a little too overeager with one, though, and he decided to butt you out of the way... so I'm hoping the next time we go you still like them!

We didn't get a chance to buy a sausage and cook it on a stick over the bonfire, but next time that will definitely be on the list.

Places like this, days like this, are why we choose to live here. It is amazing for me to think that this is your version of normal.

I love you, Beanie!
Love Mummy.

Our first real conversation

Dear Beanie,

There is always so much to tell you when it has been a few days between letters, but I kind of like it better when I only write about one amazing thing you've been doing. But know that I could write about twenty!

You are SUCH a joy lately!

I know I have been really focused on your language lately, but it really blows my mind! Today, we had our first actually conversation. In the past, our conversations have generally revolved around me asking if you want something. For example, if you are in the pram and I ask if you'd like to do some walking, you'll either say "NO!" or "Walking!"

Today, though, my brain exploded. I came up to you and asked, "How are you?" Normally, you'd parrot this back to me with a smile. Instead, today, with such conviction, you said, "Good!" I asked again, and again you said, "Good!" And then? While I was standing looking at you wide-eyed, you asked me, "How are you?" And when I paused a moment? You decided I was good too!

At the moment, little one, you seem to be truly happy.

I was going to leave it there, but just a few minutes ago we had one of those golden moments where your Daddy and I just laughed and laughed and laughed. You climbed on me asking for a cuddle, which is always lovely and makes me melt a little. This time you snuggled in and said, "Awwwww. Awwwwww." exactly the way I do when you go and cuddle your daddy. There is nothing funnier than hearing your own voice come out of your child's mouth! 

Even the little moments like these are worth savouring

I love you ever so much! All the time, every single moment. 

Love Mummy.

When Daddy comes home

Dear Beanie,

Your daddy has been away in Japan for two and a half weeks, which must feel like about six months in toddler time.

He's home!

That moment when you woke and heard his voice in the living room, when you squealed and wanted to be put down, when you ran so so so fast into his open arms, shouting "DADDY!"... It was a movie moment! And yes, it made me all teary.

That whole day, instead of saying 'Mama' fourteen thousand times, you said 'Daddy'. You are such a happy boy to have your daddy home! Nobody can throw you upside down like him!

Just checking he's still there... 

I love you, little one. It's nice to be a whole family again.

Love Mummy.

Your Vocabulary

Dear Beanie,

When we were at the neurologist a while ago, we were asked about your vocabulary. How many words do you know?

I find this, without a doubt, the absolute most interesting phase of your development. Discovering which words make it into your vocab and which are left out... which are acquired first and why... which are you just parroting the sounds we make (like 'I love you') and which are thought out concepts (like 'Good morning', and 'Another red train!'). But as for how many?

Guessing vocabulary is tough. At the time, your daddy quickly guessed at 100. But then we actually thought about it... and no, absolutely not. In your big animal book, you can point to and name at least thirty or forty of the fifty animals in there (actually, I wrote this an hour ago. Since then, we've read it together and you know ALL of them, even ones like quokka, vulture, antelope and stick insect. Okay, I lie... you kept calling the wombat a bear, but still!). In the bathroom alone, you can say water, toothbrush, toothpaste, washing machine, toilet, shower, iron, Mummy's, Daddy's, Ruben's, clothes... You can tell me what colour all those things are. You can tell me if they are big or not. You can tell me if they are dirty or clean, wet or dry. And then there is food. And then there are body parts. There are your toys, and the occasional description of how you are using them ('Big kick' for your ball, or 'all flat' for your sand). There are all the colours you can identify. And do people count?

Just a little happy snap of us. You can't get away from me! 

You have recently started to use more than just nouns and adjectives and the occasional very simple sentence, such as 'off we go'. You have started to say words that represent concepts, like inside and outside, open and closed, and are using them as commands.

And then there is the who bilingualism business, just to complicate things further. When you have finished eating, you announce, 'All finished' about 70% of the time, and "Fertig!" the other 30%. A 'ball' is occasionally a 'ball' (okay... so this reads the same... but it is pronounced differently, and you obviously switch between the two), a 'car' occasoinally an 'auto'. 'Apple', your first word besides Mummy and Daddy, is occasionally 'Apfel'.

I've been reading that between the ages of two and three, some kids acquire as many as ten new words a day. I just went in to collect you from your nap, and before I could take you out of your cot, you had learnt 'humidifier' (which you say now as dididifier) and 'tail' on the monkey. This morning you managed to distinguish a ship from a boat, and now use them both appropriately. Your new favourite 'power words' -- the ones that make me do something -- are 'Look!' and 'This way'. And while your counting is really just parroting at this point, you definitely have the idea of 'another' down pat, which kind of amazes me. For example, you will point to the left side of my chest and say, 'boobie', then point to the right and say, 'another boobie!'.

So how many words can you say? Who knows. How many can you understand? More than we give you credit for, I think!

I love you and that little exploding mind of yours!
Love Mummy.

Good Morning and Goodnight.

Hi there, my little sick bean.

Sick again! The winters here sure knock us all around, eh? Despite having a terrible cold, you have had one of your cutest days today. Your brain's language centre is obviously going gang-busters, with major overnight developments, and you seem to be coming right into the phase of imaginary and pretend play, where you have actually made a real connection with one of your stuffed animals. Not taking anything away from your odd connection with the online-banking calculator that has to go with us everywhere, of course...

I could not have been more surprised when you woke up this morning, after such an horrific night, saying, 'Good morning! Open window?' instead of just, 'Mamma! Mamma!' Wow! Your brain must really be exploding right now! As an aside, I've come to realise that this is potentially why daycare is so rough for you at the moment: You are revelling in your new-found communication skills here with your daddy and I, but they are getting you nowhere with German speakers. You do occasionally throw some German around here, though, in the most unpredictable of circumstances, which makes me giggle and makes us very proud.

At breakfast, you got your puppy dog (His name is Ooboo, which was your response when Nanny once asked you his name. In hindsight, we think this was perhaps your attempt at saying your own name.), put a bib on him, sat him next to you, fed him a breakfast muffin and spooned him some puffs using the aeroplane noise. Oh the cuteness!

At least Ooboo eats those super healthy
and yummy muffins I make! 

 Ooboo proceeded the spend the day with you, doing crazy jumping on the couch, riding with you on your Bobbycar, and snuggling in for a bottle with you before nap time while watching Thomas the Tank Engine (again. And only the same few episodes. We aren't allowed to modernise). When you felt particularly shoddy, you actually asked for 'cuddles' for the first time too, instead of just saying, 'up', and then asked if I could give Ooboo a cuddle too. When it was time for you to go to bed, you said 'Goodnight', also for the first time, to all of Ooboo's facial features, like I do with you each evening. Goodnight eyes, goodnight ears, goodnight nose, goodnight mouth, goodnight cheeks, goodnight chin, goodnight eyebrows, goodnight hair, goodnight head, goodnight Ooboo. I wonder if you will still feel connected to Ooboo when you feel healthy again. 

It's after 7.30pm, my love, and I need to go to bed while I can. It is amazing a woman can survive on so little sleep.... and who knows what havoc lies ahead of us on this still night...

I love you, my darling. It breaks my heart when you wake up so sick, moaning 'No. No. No ouchies. No more, mummy, No more.' but I promise you that it won't last forever and you will be healthy again soon.

Love you all the time.
Love Mummy.

Getting you clean, the green way.

Dear Beanie,

Your daddy has been away for almost two weeks now. Just before he left, you started to cotton on to the idea that bath means almost bed, and you have the ability to say no. So we went from having a bath with Daddy every night for some fun, lovely Daddy-only time, to perhaps once every two or three nights.

Since he has been gone, I've managed it once. And I had to get into the bath first, make lots of bubbles and blow a puff or two your way, get you in with your shirt still on and bribe you with never ending amounts of toothpaste.

I have managed to get you into the bathroom each night for a quick teeth brushing and face washing session, but... Mm.

Here is how I eventually managed to get you into the shower: food colouring. Don't be fooled now, the water still didn't go anywhere higher than your waist, and I wonder if we will ever manage to wash your hair again...

This was super amounts of fun though!

I love you, you crazy boy.
Love Mummy.

Vegemite Vegemite Vegemite Vegemite

Dear Beanie,

It was Australia Day recently, and we did absolutely nothing whatsoever to celebrate. I do feel a little guilty about that... to be honest, I'm not even sure if I told you. Bad Mummy. We may have to have a make-up Aussie Day when your daddy returns from Japan.

You must have been feeling a little lack of Aussie spirit in the house... and you decided to make up for it, big time.

The jams cupboard was open at dinnertime. This is normally a fatal mistake, because you often then refuse to eat all dinner until you get your spoon in the peanut butter jar. But last night? You pointed to the cupboard and started chanting a word I didn't recognise. It sounded like 'lemonade' at first, and I tried and tried to understand, pointing to things and saying the name, but not succeeding. I told you that there wasn't any lemonade, I'm sorry, and I closed the cupboard. Oh the howling! Ok. You wanted something in that cupboard. We worked through it systematically, with you saying 'NO!' every time I pulled something out. Until we got to the back left hand corner and I finally understood!

"VEGEMITE!" I was so happy to have decoded, and the look of joy on your face was priceless at having succeeded once again at this miraculous thing called communication. I then got you a slice of bread and some butter (for really, who would ever have vegemite without butter?!). For the next forty minutes, you refused all attempts at a proper, socially acceptable way of eating Vegemite, and instead ate is straight from the jar.

Yes, you read this correctly. Vegemite, straight from the jar.

You are so much more hard-core than any other person I have ever met! You may be sensitive in many many ways, my love, but Vegemite? No problem. Bring it on.

I love you, little Böhnli!
Love Mummy

The Magical Mystery Moo

Dear Beanie,

I desperately want to write you a letter about the magical mystery moo place that exists in the centre of our little town... but I also want to write about what a phenomenal amount of food you just ate today. When I put it like that, it seems as if option one is the more interesting of the two, yeah? Haha.

There is this magical place where there exists a cow that only you can see. Every time we walk through that particular intersection in our village, you 'moo!' loudly and repeatedly! This has been going on for months now, and your daddy and I are yet to find this invisible cow, or anything that remotely resembles a cow!

Look. Where is the cow?

No cow here!

Nope! Not here!

Moo!

The only thing I can think of... perhaps you moo'd once at random and we made a big fuss of trying to find the cow, and now it is a fun joke for you...? Perhaps? If that is the case, my love, you are a very cheeky sausage, trying to trick us every time!

* * *

Alright, I can't resist... Just in case you happen to want the details of your food consumption, here it is. Feel free to skip right to the 'Love Mummy' at the end, though! For reference, Normally, you would wake up and have a bottle, then a bowl of puffed oats with milk. Then you'd have some yoghurt and lunch would be something like veggie risotto, veggie spätzli or a scrambled egg with some bread and veggies. Afternoon snack, though often you don't want one, would be a piece of fruit and perhaps a cracker, and then dinner. Bottle before bed, and you're done.

Today? Here's what you had:

Your morning bottle.

• FIVE bowls of cornflakes. Yes, five. And you wanted a straw to drink all your milk out of the bowl too.
• One hour later, a slice of brown bread with cream cheese and a WHOLE banana.
• One hour later, a bowl of oat puffs.
• Ten minutes later, a few crunches on some raw carrot I was using (woot!), half an apple and an ANZAC biscuit that your lovely Auntie Christine brought over for us for Australia day yesterday.
• A Bio frankfurter, half a tin of corn, some peas and a cripsy cracker.
• A big bottle of milk.
• A whole mandarin, a stupid amount of raisins and some of your daddy's muesli.
• An hour later, three quarters of my seedy croissant and half of my fresh orange juice.
• TWO slices of wholemeal toast with almond butter (plus I suspect a LOT straight from the jar)
• A bowl of veggie spätzli that would rival the size of mine. (It's not over yet. Did you think so? Me too)
• A whole big five-piece carrot and oat waffle and a half a tub of yoghurt.
• And then a 200ml bottle before bed.

The most hilarious thing? As you were watching your bedtime episode of Thomas, you pulled up your shirt to reveal a belly so enormous that it seemed the skin barely held it in, and you sat there rubbing away at it and smiling.

I love you, my little Buddha!

Love Mummy.

Happiness

Dear Beanie,

I have just had the most wonderful day with you, little one. Today I can finally pronounce us both healthy again, and the joy is palpable.

It's not really that we did anything particularly special today, it's more of a feeling. You were happy. I feel like it has been a few weeks since you have really been happy, but I know this awful illness has been hanging about in you for a while. But there was also that business with the neurologist... and things have just been pretty rough lately. But today? There was no crying, no tantrums, just giggles and talking and asking cute questions and imitating my phrases (like, 'Where's she gone?', 'Here I am!', 'Off we go,' and 'Ready, set, GO!') and dancing and smiling the whole day long.

This is happiness, right here! 

I love days like this, where we have no plans and are never rushed to go anywhere or do anything. It means that there are opportunities to do things like take out all my tea cannisters, open them, experience all the different smells with a very exaggerated sniff, give smells names like 'fruity' or 'spicy', and practice putting them all back. And then do this all over again with all of my herbs and spices. This is something that I need to do with you together, not something I can give you free rein over, and we both spent over an hour (literally!) on the kitchen tiles, exploring these scents. I fear that having places to go, people to see, things to plan and pack and cook, often gets in the way of being able to do lovely things like this with you.

The thing that made you giggle the most today? A new game of ours. You always spend the whole day calling my name in a variety of ways, whether you actually want my attention or not, and today I decided that every time you said my name, I'd say yours. Which was perhaps seven hundred times. Two days ago you started saying your own name, you see, so it must have a different kind of grandeur to you at the moment, because me responding to a drawn out "Maaammaaaa" with a drawling "Ruuuuuuuuuuubeeeeeeen" was simply hysterical to you. This would make you giggle every single time, all day long.

The cheekiest grin in the whole universe! 

It's lovely to see you happy again, my bubba! And wow, how true it is, that when you are happy, I am happy.

I love you oodles and oodles.
Love MAAAMMAAA!

"This One"

Dear Beanie,

Well, we are sick again. A pretty severe and horrifically ugly tummy bug, but let's not go into the details. Let's just say it certainly ain't pretty.

I don't really have the energy to write at the moment, but it has been over a week now since my last letter... So I'm dragging my thumbs from the couch and doing this on my phone.

Trying to think of some funny things you've done recently... Oh! I've discussed many times before how you are obsessed with listening to Kings of Convenience. Last night we had a big fun dance to the song 'I'd Rather Dance with You' in a moment of health, and ypu giggled your little head off. Then, when it finished, you announced that you wanted "more Binz" (kings), but we WERE already listening to it... So I changed the track to play the dancing song again, and asked you, "This one?" You smiled, said, "This one!" and started dancing with your eagle. This morning, you came up to the stereo and demanded to listen to "This one" again and again. Seems that is the new title of the song. Funny how your brain ticks!

You also have started to play with the volume nob in an entirely appropriate manner. When the dancing song comes on that you love, you turn it up, but not too loud. And you turn it down when it's finished. Cool, huh?

You still amaze me, little one.

Sleep time. Love you.
Love Mummy.

Dealing with Anxiety

Dear Beanie,

It's things like this that make me laugh.

I wonder if you reading this letter will be the first time that you know for certain that I have problems with anxiety. Probably not... I hope not. I hope that I will always feel as if I can talk with you about the big things in life, and me having anxiety may sound as if it isn't a 'big thing', but to me it is. I know that you are currently going through a boom in your language development, and I see it as a big part of my job to give you words for the emotions that you feel, which will hopefully allow you to feel as though those emotions are valid, that you aren't the first person to ever feel that, and it enables you to communicate this feeling in a way that doesn't involve tantruming. As part of that, I see it as really important for me to be telling you how I feel too. If something makes me angry, I will get angry, tell you that I am angry, and you learn that anger is a part of life and there are appropriate ways of dealing with that feeling. For example.

So right now I feel horribly anxious. It is a feeling that sits high up in my stomach; a feeling that makes me cold and a little shaky; a feeling that makes me want to stop eating, makes me want to pull my knees up to my chin and makes me want to close all the shutters and pull the blanket over my head.

It is important for me to show you that there are ways of dealing with these anxious feelings though. So I'm trying to be a really strong and brave mama and to soldier on with normal life, being happy and playing with you, dancing to music with you, going for walks and seeing friends with you. Because I know that shutting myself away won't make it any better.

One of the reasons why I aim for you to become a bus driver or a hair dresser when you are older is so that you can spend your days doing something that makes you happy, and won't fill you with feelings like this yucky one I have now. I have always been a perfectionist, been totally self-driven in my ridiculously high expectations of myself, and I don't want that for you. It is a really hard way to be. And it means that when somebody says something that is in some way critical, it can be devastating to your idea of self. Something that, if said to another person, might just roll off them, sticks so deeply in my heart and feels like an acid burn.

If you were older and talking to me about having feelings like this, I might tell you to draw how you feel, or write about it. So that is what I am doing.

I have made a time tomorrow to speak with this person who, maybe accidentally, caused this feeling in me. The thought of this confrontation, and the thought of attempting it in broken English and broken German, makes me want to be sick. But I am a mother now, a real-live-grown-up-woman, and I am going to have to learn to deal with these things and to deal with confrontation in a better way. So I made an appointment to talk about it. That is what I would tell you to do, if you were in my situation.

Peekaboo! I hope that you'll only ever
hide from me as a game, little one. 

In some ways, having you in my life has made me so much stronger. I am learning to think about things in this way, where I have to be a role-model for you, and that helps me. But in some ways, having you in my life has made me the most vulnerable person on this planet. I love you so much, I feel such extremes of everything when it comes to you, and I am yet to learn how to sometimes control those emotions so that I can still function!

Last night, while putting you to bed, I said that I love you exactly the way that you are, and that I wouldn't change a thing about you. But then I caught myself, and thought... is that really true? Wouldn't I want you to eat more vegetables? Or to sleep better? Or to love having your hair washed? Or to let me brush your back teeth? But no. I do love you exactly as you are. All of those things are part of a whole you. There are reasons behind all these things you do. And I am learning more and more, every day, that I have to simply trust in you to be you. And my goodness, how I love the you that you are.

It's true.

Love Mummy.

Not talking about sleep

Dear Beanie,

It looks so cosy in there... can I come too?

I just wrote you a very long letter whinging about how little sleep you gave me last night, and apologising for all my crying this morning. It was just severe severe fatigue, my love. Possibly mixed with the massive emotional let-down from the craziness of the past week.

But I deleted that letter that talked about how you are, quite possibly, the world's worst sleeper. And about how you decided that now  is a great time to sleep, when you are in your pram and I can't get back home, upstairs, into my bed... (But see what I did there? I still told you... sneaky, eh?)

Instead, I want to tell you about how you have started saying 'Yes', and, of course, it is in relation to music. I always think that surely you don't want to listen to Kings of Convenience again, but everything else we try is met with a big fat no until track one of Kings begins. Then you say, 'Yes!', stand up, grab the closest teddy or two and start dancing. You have also started singing along, which is quite possible the cutest thing ever... though I may have already said this at some point? Forgive me, I'm too tired to know...

Dancing with Turtle and Teddy!

But here is you today with Teddy and Turtle, making them dance, giving them big 'MWAH' kisses and appearing very awake.

I love you, my little night monster. I really do. All the time.

Love Mummy.

It was never going to be easy

Oh my beautiful beautiful little boy, we did it. We sat through that awful EEG and discovered that you are healthy.

Such a tired, sweaty boy after so much screaming
and struggling, and a very teary mama.

It was never going to be easy. Whenever I hear bloodcurdling screams from upstairs at bath time, I know that your daddy is washing your hair. And I STILL don't actually know if your last molars are partially, fully or not-at-all through yet (you drew blood from my finger in one very earnest attempt to find out). You are funny about people messing about around your head. I talked to you about it a little throughout the day, but I didn't want to discuss it so much that you became worried all day like me. I just told you that we were going to the doctor again, a new doctor, and that he was going to do some special tests on your head (yes, that's your head. And yes, there's my head.) to make sure everything is okay. Closer to the appointment I told you that maybe you'd have to wear a special hat, and you seemed okay with that.

But it was never going to be easy. Just like how you need time to get used to the idea of snow before you play with it, or how you need at least five half-hour visits to walk around the little toy ride-on tractor at the supermarket before you consider sitting on it, and just like how you stand and watch children play in an unfamiliar playground for twenty minutes before tentatively joining them yourself, you would have needed time to be okay with it. But as it was, we sat together on the bed, you screaming and thrashing about in my lap, your daddy pulling out everything I'd brought to distract you and keep you happy (games on the tablet and my phone, my computer with shows to watch, your favourite books, stickers, etc), you screaming so incredibly hard, going bright red  and sweating from head to toe, unable to catch your breath, sobbing. Oh the sobbing. You were just an absolute absolute wreck. I'm sorry that, in your short life so far, there is ever a situation where you would become so upset. The worst part for me was that I couldn't even rest my head against yours, or nuzzle you in to my chest while telling you I'm here, your daddy's here, you are safe, it won't last forever, everything will be okay... Each time you exhausted yourself so much that your head would flop against me, an electrode would come loose and the lady would have to reattach it. And then the screaming would start all over again.

I didn't lie to you. It didn't last forever. When it was over, you asked for a bottle and just collapsed in my arms exhausted. When the neurologist spoke to us afterwards, he said that your brain activity was absolutely normal and that you showed no signs of brain abnormalities, thank god. We looked at the videos of your wobbly leg and of your newborn twitches/seizures. He watched you run around, declared you (in jest) a genius when you managed to do puzzles well beyond your age, checked reflexes and head circumference (no surprises, You're huge! But, as he says, "geniuses need big heads.") and asked us some tough questions, such as how old were you when you began putting things away. There, with this lovely man, you were happy.

Happy again soon after the ordeal, the pressure marks from the electrodes still on your forehead.

It is incredible to me how you are able to bounce back from what appeared to be one of the most stressful situations of your life. You were were babbling, giggling and wiggling away like your normal self in no time. No lasting damage, it seems.

I'm away from you this weekend, little bean. I'm doing the Swiss national netball trials in Geneva. I wish I could be with you for an hour right now, that precious morning hour, give you a thousand hugs and tell you I always love you all the time no matter what, no matter where I am.

Love Mummy