SOME THINGS I DON'T WANT TO FORGET

I am pretty sure I can safely say as parents we move on from one milestone to the next without any time to truly appreciate/remember how hard the previous was or how amazing it felt to achieve it. It’s all happening in such quick succession that we just constantly speed through the days, weeks and months.

Every now and then we have to stop. Look back. And think about how far we (and the kids!) have come. I am amazed at how quickly life seems to be going. It was only a second ago our little fourteen month old boy joined the family. Our heads and hearts full with emotions and suddenly thinking “Ah, yes… I have a baby now, what the hell do I do?!” And here we are, two and a half years later feeling like we have accomplished so much. And all in such a short space of time.

I wanted to make a little list of a few things just in case I ever need to look back and either have a little LOL moment to myself or to realise what we’ve all been through, be it small or big. Because in reality, to us, anything our own kids do is massive and wonderful no matter how small it may seem to the outside world. What spurred me on to write this? Well for as long as he’s been putting words together ‘Open’ has been ‘Hurlen’. Don’t ask me why. It is something we literally laugh about all the time. Could he not get his P’s out properly? I don’t know. We’d repeat back “Open bubba, it’s ‘open’!” and he’d replied “Door hurlen, daddy”. But now, suddenly (like everything else) he is saying ‘Open’ as clear as anything. I for one don’t ever want to forget ‘Hurlen’.

I love how serious you are when you tell me “one more minute, daddy” with your hand stretched out like you’re giving me orders!
One day you will stop singing Happy Birthday so loud that everyone in the shop looks at us…
I love how in the morning whenever I say what we'll be doing that day it'll always be met with "Do it now daddy?"... even at 5am.
When I go to work in the morning you have to give me a kiss and cuddle (which I love) and once I’ve walked down the path you always call me back for another kiss and cuddle. You know I’ll always come back so you have me wrapped around your little finger. I’ll miss it when you decide that it’s so uncool to give your old dad a kiss and a cuddle.
You are obsessed with cars. Nanny and grandad always let you play in theirs whenever they visit or we’re round there. You could spend HOURS in there happily playing.
Do you remember when you used to nap around midday? Some days for THREE hours and you would still crash out at 7pm. Those were times but oh, how they are loooong gone now!
The NHS/Health visitor advice is that babies should stop having a bottle before bed at around aged one. Well… you’ve been having a bottle with the littlest bit of milk in every single night up til now. And yes, you may be ‘too big’ for it but in my eyes it was the one thing carried over from you first year that we weren't there for. The one constant. It was you’re routine from birth and I didn’t want to change it initially when you came home because I wanted you to be as settled and happy as possible. Maybe we let it linger on too long because after the milk you’d always have a great sleep and our routine was so good? Maybe we didn’t want to let go of the baby in you? In my eyes, it was never harming you and you always get such a good report from the dentist so there are no issues there! But last night we just changed it up. You had a little milk from a cup once you were in your jammies after bath time and you walked up to bed, got yourself in and I gave you a kiss goodnight and held your hand til you drifted off. With no bottle. At aged three years and eight months you decided you were done with the bottle. And that’s exactly what we were waiting for.

There are a million things you do every day that make me laugh, smile, cry, annoy me... And I wouldn't change any of them (well apart from waking at 5am, we could change that one quite happily...)