Happy 1st Birthday Nico!!!

Woohoo! We made it! Exactly one year and 12hrs on, and here we are, alive with all our limbs and toes!

This has been a really interesting journey - like Vaughan said, the great parenting conspiration is about everyone telling you how fun it is and no one speaking of the hardship. Because if they did, the human race wouldn't survive for too long. It is true on both accounts, I wasn't quite prepared to have my heart swelling at the sight of this gummy smile, my bum bruising from all these falls down the stairs due to lack of sleep, my zygomatic muscles getting sore from smiling proudly at some achievement, and my nostrils clogging up from the stench of a carnivore's nappies.

So many things are happening at the moment, events and milestones.

Birthday parties are plentiful (there must have been nothing interesting on TV at the beginning of the year), and Nico's is this Saturday. We're having a BBQ at Oma's. For his 1st present, Mummy and Daddy got him a wooden rocking dragon which he hopefully will enjoy for the next 5 years.



I'm starting work on 3 November after a one-year parental leave (don't think it qualifies as a break or a holiday) and will take on a role with less responsibilities, as I will only be working 3 days a week, with the Wednesday from home.

This means that Nico will stay with Oma on Mondays, with me on Wednesdays and at daycare on Fridays.

We both went to daycare for an hour or two yesterday, and after his little cry for a cuddle, he settled down to explore. Wasn't too bad. Now to leave him on his own.

Swimming lessons are still going, and on his third lesson we went underwater. Judging from the panicked look on his face, the answer to 'Nicolas, are you ready?' was a no. At least he didn't cry.

We were planning on moving Nico down to his own bedroom after we come back from our holiday visiting Ong Ngoai and Ba Ngoai in Noumea. But he sped up the process by deciding to stay awake at 1am despite being informed that Daddy needed to wake up early to go to the airport. So he's been sleeping downstairs by himself for the last week and a half now, and all is going well.




He's able to feed himself using his fingers, however the use of a spoon is a very messy exercise. My only hope of saving the food is to hold his hand and keep the spoon upright. Can't imagine teaching him the use of chopsticks.

He's reached the stage where boxes can now contain objects and any toy with holes can now fit onto his stacking tower. This means that before putting/throwing anything away, we have to check first whether there's a plastic car or a wooden ring inside.

Walking? Nope... Standing upright? Not even that... He's crawling up the stairs quite well though, especially when Naliah's at the top.

Bring on the next 17 years. If we've survived thus far, we can go through anything.