You are ONE today!

My sweet Gemma Grace,

I am still unable to process that it has been a whole year since you joined our little family and completed us.  A year since I was sitting calming awaiting your arrival, buggering around with your Dad in the pre-op area before we were wheeled into theatre to meet you face to face.

You entered this world at 17h07 with loud cries and seriously pouty lips and you’ve been a delight to everyone in our family since then.  We have all fallen in love with your little face and as you have grown and developed in the past twelve months I find myself battling to remember how our family functioned before you became a part of it.

You have the cutest little laugh, although you do seem to use it more sparingly than I would like.  You love to chatter and babble away and always have long stories to tell, especially at bed time when you snuggle your face into your spit towel and look at me with those greeny blue eyes (so like my own).  You love getting zerbits.  You love it when we tickle/grab your chubby thighs.  You ADORE the water – oh how different to your brother you are in this department.  Your face lights up when you realise it’s bath or pool time.

You know what you want and you are not afraid of SCREAMING to let us know it.  You have never been one to crawl in the traditional sense preferring to do your own version of a sideways bum shuffle and whilst you are cruising around quite comfortably I think you like being in our arms a bit too much and have absolutely NO interest in walking yet.

At last you are getting some hair – it was with much disdain that I realised I had birthed a practically bald baby!  Everyone keeps telling me that when your hair DOES eventually come in that I should expect mops of it but only time will tell if that is the case.  We wonder if you’re going to end up being a light blonde or a more blondish brown as your hair is currently different colours on top and in the back.

Baby girl, you have changed me.

I always thought of myself as a boy mom but you have made me a girl mom too.  You have made me, Daddy and Kade grow and stretch in the year you’ve been with us.  You’ve made us all short tempered at times, but definitely more loving too.  You are teaching us to be a family of four.  Teaching us to give more, to share more, to be more.

I cannot wait to see how you grow in the year to come.  Our gift from God.  Thank you for choosing us to be your family.

We love you Gemma Bean.  So very much.

Happy FIRST birthday my little jewel.

Out with the Old : In with the New

I always feel that I need to close off the year that was in order to move forward with the year that is, but this year I’ve just been feeling pretty “meh” about the task.  I’ve not really seen the point of closing 2014 off because honestly what is 2015 but yet another day I get to live my life?  Does it really matter if I’ve not done a mental or written round up of the past 365 + 6 days?

I guess in the greater scheme of things it doesn’t but I’ve been feeling a hankering for it the last two days.  Like a primal urge to get it done so I can formulate “proper” plans for the year that already is.

So.

2014.  It was a year pretty much like any other.  It started off with fireworks (ended with them too actually) and plans to get Kade ready for school, to get myself ready to become a mother of two, to get the last of the work done and handed over before maternity leave.  All these plans and stuff that needed to be done.  That’s life thought isn’t it?  It goes on around you while you’re making plans… but I digress.

2014 was the year I became a girl mommy.  It has certainly been a learning curve for me, this girl mom thing as well as being a mom of two.  The balancing act has been hard at times and has often threatened to overwhelm me.  That said it was a good year for all of us as we found our little parts we play in the theatre of the Young household.

It was the year I discovered that taking some time for myself to do something JUST for me will not mean that my family will fall apart.  I learned to love running again in a very special way.  I had to find discipline and research programs etc pretty much on my own.  I trained for a half marathon and completed it.  I’ve found through other runners a sense of camaraderie, a running group, a madness and a love for the road that I had lost for a long, long time.

We lost my uncle to cancer.   It was hard to see my cousins deal with their loss which is still too fresh.

We saw my aunt in hospital way too often for my liking.  I have a feeling that we will lose another loved one in 2015 which breaks my heart.

I saw friends lose babies and husbands.  I saw friends have babies and husbands.  Bittersweet.  I mourned the losses and celebrated the gains.  Overall much like the past few years there have been highs and lows.  More highs than lows and in my mind that always counts as a victorious year.  Good outweighing the bad is always something to strive for.

So my hope for 2015 as I am already in the thick of party planning, preparation for the school year, organising for work to be done and sorted before we go away on a proper holiday is that I can count it as a victorious year as well.  That the good will outweigh the bad, that the highs will by far outnumber the lows and that I grow as a woman, mother and wife.

2015 – we’re here, in the now…

Lets do this!