Letter to my almost one year old

Dear Olivia,
This time last year you were about to join our family. We knew you were arriving but didn't know when exactly.
It all started after lunch on Sunday, the 4th December. We went to the garden centre with your grandparents because your mum wanted to get a nice winter plant to put outside the front door. Everything was ready for your arrival except that one thing! They didn't have the plant that your mum was looking for, but your grandma, knowing how important that was, suggested we take a red poinsettia...it was almost Christmas after all. And so we did, we took the plant home and left your grandparents planting it outside while we went to the gym. And there it happened, you decided that it was time to get ready, you had enough of hearing muffled voices, of floating around, of not be able to see a thing...it was time you start to get ready to come to this world. It was 4.50pm when I heard you complaining for the first time. We headed back home, excited and scared, oh so scared! We sent your grandparents to the hotel and we started to get ready ourselves....bag for mummy-check!, bag for papa-check!, bag for baby-check! All set then, what's next? We watched some tv, until we had enough of waiting at home and headed to the hospital. I will skip what happened between 2pm and the time you were born, let's just say that it was intense and that I don't remember all the details. But one thing I do remember, your dad was next to me the entire time helping me through the hardest part, nervously waiting to meet you. And there you arrived, at 8.17am all squashed and red, screaming with joy or disappointment, we'll never know. And we loved you straight away, you were there, within our arms, filling our hearts with joy. It has been almost a year since that moment. And we do love you even more. You are our biggest, and most successful, accomplishment. Thank you for choosing us, little Miss O. We love you. Your mum and dad xxx.

Pumpkin, pine nuts & honey cake

My mum got us a big pumpkin from the farmers market last week. The intention was, as one would expect, to carve it, make a pumping soup with the flesh and maybe toast the seeds, in time for Halloween. But life had other plans, so the weekend passed and by monday morning the pumpkin was still waiting for some attention on the kitchen table.

Then yesterday I went to the supermarket after work and grabbed one of those promotional booklets which had an entire section dedicated to pumpkin recipes, and there it was...a new recipe for a pumpkin cake. But best of all, I had all the ingredients needed at home (except for the eggs, which I realised half way through the baking process and had to rush to the off licence!). So, after putting little miss O to bed last night, I did some long due baking and enjoyed a slice while watching the new season of Revenge. 

This recipe will definitely go into my book!

Us in pictures

We didn't have any picture of us in our house until 10 months ago. We never had, even in our previous flats, even when we weren't living together. It's one of those things with no reason at all. It was just us as we were. Us as we were before Olivia was born. And then things started to change, in many ways. One of the things that happened is that we started to print out photos, get canvases printed out for us and all of them went on our walls. There is a narrow corridor in our house, outside the kitchen. We hanged all of our pictures there and O loves looking at them. She smiles at her own pics and tries to grab the other ones. 

And I just put some more up this morning! I printed out these new pics (the ones in the white frames) for G, before he went to SF back in June. Hidden some in his wallet and some in his luggage so he wouldn't miss us too much. And now are on display, to fill our little narrow corridor with more of our memories!

Back to work!

And the day has eventually come, the day I go back to work after the most eventful year of my life! I wasn't really looking forward to it and now that it's here, I feel even worst than I imagined. The only consolation is knowing that little Miss O will be spending a lot of time with her dad, having fun and bonding with him even more than she has so far. I miss them terribly! I'm just glad that the walk to the office is a short and enjoyable one, making my day a little easier. And of course there is always the lunch break when I get to see them and kiss them, making the morning hours moving a bit quicker.