Things I want to remember

“Aunty Susie, what are you doing with that phone?”

Usually when I go visit my sister I take lots of photos of Noah. As I only get to see him every few weeks I like to record as much as possible, while enjoying the moment too, of course, but there is this compulsion to record, so that I have something to sustain me while I’m away from him (my feelings for this little boy are that melodramatic. I get tearful when I’m here and he’s there. PMS isn’t always to blame.)

This weekend there were moments when I realised I was not taking photos. We’d be playing — teacups and plastic toast; chasing each other round the kitchen table; reading the tractor picture book  — and I’d panic for a millisecond and think: where’s my camera? But rather than exit the fun to go find it, I’d just keep playing. I’m trusting that I will see him again, that he won’t change so much that I don’t recognise him when we’re next together. That he will remember me.

– He spent roughly 90 mins walking around an art fair on Saturday chatting into his mobile phone (my iPod). He’d shout “hello?” and then blather on in what sounded like Cantonese :)

– I spent at least 30 minutes talking into a wooden banana yesterday.

– I got my first bonafide cuddle on Sunday. We were alone in the house, playing pretend picnics on the living room floor. Noah put his shopping basket over his arm and headed to the kitchen to get on his Scuttlebug to visit the imaginary shops. So I called out buh-bye and said “can I have a kiss?” He turned around, came back over and with his tiny pursed lips gave me a kiss before wrapping his little arms around me and placing his head on my shoulder. I was still sitting there with cartoon lovehearts falling out of my eyes when he did it again five minutes later. I can honestly say that was my favourite moment of 2011.

New words of note: nice, aeroplane (said unprompted when he saw one in the sky), horsie, “sit down” and… my favourite… Susie (pronouced shoo-she).

Tiny Santa


I had another post lined up for today. And then my sister sent me these photographs and that put paid to that idea. I love tiny Santa so much my body isn’t actually big enough to contain all the love. I need an extra body. Maybe two.

The beauty of Karen


Last week I enjoyed 24 hours of decent health before phlegm-gate started, which was lucky because that’s when Karen and I had arranged to meet at Jamie’s. We’d first met three years ago when she and her wee family were last in the UK visiting relatives, so we had a lot to catch up on — and catch up we did! In that time we’ve both written books, started teaching and built businesses that are manifestations of our hearts, so it was qute something to be able to compare notes and witness how far each other had come. Of course, after lunch we decamped to a Milsom Street bench to take the obligatory portrait-of-the-blogger, something that made us both squirm (okay, maybe I squirmed more — Karen, I’m sorry!), but we got the shots and with a breathless embrace we said our farewells. Just before we parted, we held hands for a moment and Karen told me I seemed happy now. When she’d first met me I’d only just moved to Bath and was getting ready to teach an evening class that would prove to change my life. Those first months here hadn’t been easy, and I remember talking to her about grief in a way that proved it was still so present in my everyday life. So to hear her words last week — for her to have seen and noted the changes in me — was a gift that I’ve been carrying with me ever since. Thank you for that, my friend x



Things I want to remember


His current list of words:

apple
tractor
mama
dada
nana
moo cow
poo
nana (banana)
choo choo
hey-koo (thank you)
one.. two…
Ummm
Stee (Steve)
hello
buh-bye
Noah
Abby
Maia (the cat)

[updated to add some words we forgot and some new ones!]

car
more
no (obviously)
shoes
beep beep
boing boing
let’s go <—- how cool is this one?

Now listen to this slice of magic:

 

His mummy has been teaching him to say Susie but he’s still finding the “soo” and the “zee” sounds a bit hard ;-)