moments

Annika's 8 weeks now. It's flown past, and of course we knew it would. I already feel like she's growing up too fast, it's going by too fast, where's my newborn? This baby's getting big! She's gained more that 25% of her birth weight. She can almost hold her head up. She makes amazingly adorable little noises. She slept for 5 hours!! Two nights in a row! (Wish she'd do that in her crib ... but still). 
  Nina can balance a 2-wheel balance bike, she can coast along on a scooter, and she can do very simple additions, like: if Papa and Andrew were here, how many would be have? --5! She got invited to a birthday party, her little friend Alfie from nursery. This was her first party where it wasn't through us knowing the parents; she made her own friend. It was so cute. They had Jo Jingles, which is a woman who does toddler songs and all the toddlers jump and sing and do various movements and so on. We've been hearing about it since November and we finally saw it, including well-known favourites like 'no more monkey business jumping on the bed' and 'everybody do this, do this, everybody do this just like me'. Her scooter got stolen, or maybe just lost, at nursery today, which was of course very sad and made me feel pretty stupid although A. was the one who left it there. 
  But back to Annika. I can't shake the sad feeling of how transitory this all is, the urge to record it (and I'm good at taking pictures and videos, just terrible at uploading them). So I want to start writing about some of the moments, those moments that happen every day, if only for a few seconds, that make babyhood amazing. So here's today's.
  A. and I went to Cafe Nero today while Annika was having an extremely long nap in her carrycot. I started reading this book by Jodi Picoult, 'Sing you home', which starts with the narrator losing a pregnancy, and it's so movingly written ... Anyway Annika woke up, saw me, smiled the most amazing, blissed-out smiles straight at me, as soon as she saw I was there: these really recognizing, perfect, smiles, smiles of pure untainted, uncomplicated, innocent, bliss, and then she went back to sleep. I hope I never ever forget those smiles.