Sharing the Love

A wonderful thing happened the other night. In a darkened bedroom with the curtains drawn and a lamp lit, my little girl pointed up to her bookshelves and said, "I want that one there, Mummy. The one in the middle. The one with the mouse." "What, this one?" I replied, hopefully, picking up Slow Loris by Alexis Deacon. "Yes." Heaven!

I have always, always loved this book. Originally published in 2002, it was Alexis Deacon's first book and, amongst other accolades, was listed as one of Time magazine's 100 Best Books of All Time.* It's a work of comedy genius and if you've never experienced Slow Loris, you are in for an absolute treat.

Everyone at the zoo thinks that Loris is boring, because he's SO slow. It takes him ten minutes to eat a satsuma, twenty minutes to get from one end of his branch to the other and an hour to scratch his bottom (this is a particularly favourite part for Little C). But what no one knows, is that Slow Loris has a secret: at night, he likes to do things FAST!

I loved reading this book with Little C and I was even happier when she asked me to read it again, and then again the following morning. Sharing things you love is one of the great joys of having a small person and I can't think of anything lovelier than enjoying a book we both love, cooking together, playing the piano together and making things together. I can only hope that there will be more and more of these magical moments as she gets older. There is so much to look forward to. Lucky me!

* More on this list in a future post, I think.

A Room of Her Own

What a great couple of months we've had since I last posted here. We've had our first family holiday to Cornwall (including Catriona's first steps in the sea!), done lots of work around the house (all of the things that we've been putting off for the last eighteen months), and watched our little baby change and grow, turn into a little girl and begin being her own wonderful, wonderful person. 

It's amazing to see the changes in her from day to day. Just last week over the course of two days, she learned six new words; teeth, cheese, Janey, Phoebe, bed and Volvo. (D is particularly proud of that last one!) She understands things in a way that we've never really appreciated. She has a sense of time passing, she knows who she is in the context of her own world and she is happy in it. 

When we came back from our holiday, she finally moved into her own room. A little later – well, a whole year later – than we'd planned, but wow! what a difference it has made to us all. It's a lovely room and a space that I would've loved to have had as a child. It is very much her own room though, with her bed and her clothes, books, toys, a mobile, lights and pictures (although the latter aren't actually up on the wall yet.) We bravely took the decision to take the sides off her cot to give her a big girl's bed and true to her own unflappable nature, she slept in it completely unfazed from day one. And boy, does she sleep. When her cot was at the bottom of our bed, she would wake up four, five, six times a night. I'm a restless sleeper and, to be honest, we wound each other up. But now – and I truly hope that this will last – she goes to bed and stays in bed, asleep until we go upstairs to wake her up the following morning.  

And waking her up is now my new favourite time of the day. She always wakes up with the most spectacular bedhead and a breathtaking need to chat. She can go from sound asleep to full on blabbermouth in less than five seconds. It's astonishing. And lovely. And the only way to distract her from her early morning monologue is to ask, "Catriona, would you like some breakfast?", to which the answer is unswervingly and resoundingly, "YES!"

And then we start our day and the rest of our lives together. Love that girl!