Granizado Oglesby was in town for the Parade of the Three Kings. I don’t think Riu yet grasps the story of the three wise men bearing gifts for all the children.

Riu looks beset by cares nonetheless. “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.”

Out and about in Gracia on New Year’s Eve, Riu tries facing forwards in the sling.

This way she can see all around her.

Up, down and all around her.

We went to the Science Museum en famille, because we are a family. We even have the Science Museum Family Membership to prove it.

Is our Family Membership still valid if the mummy of the family is eaten by a Tarbosaurus?

Mindful of Michael Faradays’ reminder that “All this is a dream” and his exhortation “Still examine it by a few experiments…” Piglet gets her hooves into the plasma ball.

A belated Happy New Year to everyone.

On the first of January we went up Montjuic mountain in the cable car. Here she is high above the city.

You can see our house from here, somewhere.

A new year for a new baby.

{six month birthday}

My sweet little babycakes,

Before you arrived, when we were waiting and waiting, I had such grand plans of how I was going to the most perfect parent for you. I was going to make all sorts of wonderful birthday cards for you every month. I was going to keep them in a box and give them to you when you have your own babies, and send copies of them to your Granizados. It was a grand plan, like lots of my other plans, but unfortunately it didn’t happen. It didn’t happen because you happened. And you are the most incredible thing that has happened in my life. I was so incredibly happy when you were born, I couldn’t stop just looking at you for months. I would look and look and look and feel like I was staring at the first person in the world. My eyes were drawn to you like a magnet and I couldn’t put you down because I just wanted to hold you so I could look at you better, without getting a crick in my neck.

Even now, your papa and I sneak into your room when you’re sleeping just to make sure you’re real and we grin at each other like fools and we can’t even articulate what we are feeling because we don’t think there are words to describe how happy you have made us. One of those early days after you were born, I was sitting in the nursing chair on the balcony watching the sunrise thinking how happy I was to have had a little baby girl daughter, because you are a sacred and wise, wise woman and I know that one day when you have your own babies you will also experience all these incredible feelings too and that made me so happy that I had to look at you again.

I’m trying to hold onto each and every moment with you, because one day I know that you won’t want to be held and kissed and cuddled and will one day fly the coop, flea the nest and leave us. Already I miss you when you were a little teeny tiny baby and couldn’t even focus your eyes. All you could do then was snuffle around my chest, searching for milk. I want to hold onto every moment as much as I cannot wait for the next, to see what changes they will bring. I can’t wait to show you flowers, rivers, kayaking,  gravity, tides, the moon, horse-riding, hiking, climbing, play-school, school and university. I can’t wait to show you the world.

My friends ask me what it’s like to be a mother. Everything in my life has changed this year, and I feel as though I have lost hold of everything that I was, in order to become everything that I was supposed to be. I don’t know if I feel confident or competent enough yet to feel like a mother, but I feel honoured to be your mama. You’ve taught me so much and you make me feel like a child again, because I see everything through your eyes, through the eyes of a child, again. Watching you change and grow every day is endlessly fascinating for us, it’s like watching brain plasticity in motion. Holding you, sleeping with you, feeding you and carrying you everywhere with us has been such a divine experience. Seeing your little face for the first time, seeing your teeny tiny arm and even tinier fingers sticking out of the blanket as your papa held you in the hospital when we were all finally together, holding you to my chest, opening your nappy to see if you were a boy-baby or a girl-baby, taking you to see the Sagrada Familia for the first time, where your papa and decided we were a sacred family, camping for the first time with you, and carrying your three month old self over the top of the Pyrenees with your papa in front of us, are all memories that make my head swim with emotion.

I brought you to your six-month check up yesterday and the doctor asked if you were a good baby, but I don’t think babies are good or bad, whether they cry or not, sleep or not, are happy or not, is not a measure of goodness. And still, I wanted to say that you are more than good, you are the best little baby girl in the world. You are so clever and perfect, and calm and wise. But I couldn’t, and not just because I couldn’t pull the spanish words together, but because all I could do was look at you. You don’t have to do anything to be good, you just are, just by being you.

You came at the most perfect moment in our lives and your papa and I are so excited to spend the rest of our lives together, as a family, and we are so grateful to you for coming to us and being here with us.

Thank you.

kisses and raspberries on your warm bellybutton babycakes

{superhappyface}

It gets cold sitting out on Placa Catalunya a few days before Christmas.

A piglet has to wear her hat and scarf; show her colours.