first five years

Saturday Morning Art Time

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We’ve had so many changes lately. Just since the start of the year, there has been C no longer at daycare, C starting school, lunches and baking and sickness and pickups and drop-offs and dinners and uniforms and homework and new friends and old friends in new contexts. This last week I have added to the upheaval by insisting on changing up the sleeping arrangements which has meant clearing space here in order to have space to move furniture out of that room to there and other things moving down to the garage just for now. A lot of change. 

And I have 3 very sensitive girls. 

One way my girls destress is through watching shows on ABC Kids, which works well until E decides she’s tired of an episode or a show and takes control and changes things. Or the internet stops working. Total and utter devastation.

Another way my girls destress is art. Colouring in. Painting. Making pictures. Drawing. Colouring the easel (or table or tiles or walls).

After school tends to be a screen time snack time veg out session. Sometimes there is homework or dancing or ice painting too. Saturdays I was just letting roll along, until last week. We needed nappy liners and milk, so I took the girls to the shops.

It was horrible.

I can’t remember any particulars, just that it was horrible. Once we were home, and things had calmed down somewhat and children who nap were napping, I realised that C’s behaviour was a sign of needing time out. That, I can accommodate.

I suggested Saturday morning become an Art-Time Time-Out and she was delighted. 

This weekend was our first Saturday Morning Art Time session. C drew fairies all morning, while telling me allllllll about fairies in general and these fairies in particular and their names and how they were all related and then cutting them out, very carefully, with her scissors.

E joined in with her new washable paints. Mostly by painting her body and tablecloth and high chair, followed by a bath. 

I had much happier girls. We had a much more relaxed and calm Saturday. I found out little snippets of other things that had happened at school, new signs she had learnt, a new song, games she played, that she has evolved in her art style just in the last few weeks, that she seems to like names that start with ‘L’. All of the fairies have names that start with ‘L’. 

So it is decided. As much as possible, we won’t be doing mundane things like shopping on weekends. Instead, art.

I’m always up for new ideas, too. Do you have a way that helps your school kid destress on the weekend? Do you have a favourite art activity to do with young children? I’d love to hear about it in the comments!

In other news, WordPress kept reminding me about adding a payment or donation button. Last week, I finally sorted it out. If you would like to send some funds my way, thank you! Every little bit really, really helps. I’ll probably have different text for different contexts but we’ll see how creative or apt I can remain. Ha. 

Help fund our art supplies – thank you!

A Comparison of Sleep

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Things that make me laugh: an inexhaustive list.

My husband impersonating one of our girls.

C doing a funny walk.

E telling me she hasn’t played in the sandpit at daycare when I now have sand all over the parts of me that just gave her a cuddle when picking her up.

S chuckling as we tickle her tummy.

A bush turkey putting its head down trying to be inconspicuous while running away from us.

Me doing a weekend of baking for lunchboxes and the freezer and then C telling me how delicious everything is and could she please have a ham and cheese sandwich for lunch tomorrow.

People asking me if my girls are different from each other.

I mean, really. That one really gets a belly laugh. They could not be more different. I could write this whole blog, a post every day, on how different they are.

For example, sleep. Sleep is rather on the brain right now as we are in the midst of clearing space to move furniture to change the sleeping arrangements. And E is apparently in the process of dropping her nap. And S is definitely maturing in her napping.

So, without doing a blow-by-blow, here are some thoughts on how my girls differ in terms of sleep.

C. Terrible sleeper as a baby and toddler. I know she DID sleep because I have photographic proof, but there is very little memory of it. Most of my recollections of her aged 3-14 months are surrounding sleep. Please sleep. Why don’t you sleep. The guide says you should be asleep now. Awake now. HOW ARE YOU STILL AWAKE?!?! Ahem. Feeding to sleep. Patting to sleep that only worked a little so back to feeding to sleep. The energy I burned trying to rock her to sleep. The bliss, the relief, that I still feel like it was this week, when she dropped her nap altogether the weekend before she turned 2 so then went to sleep at night without drama or fussing or hours and hours of feeding and chatting and stories and music and feeding and patting and feeding.

E. Beautiful sleeper. Slept, without me having to cajole her or do anything except put her down, exactly when the guide said she should. Would start screaming if she needed to be asleep and I was holding her. Handsies (and occasionally, footsies) to fall asleep. Overnight wakes easily resettled with a dummy or, once or twice a night, a bottle. Things get tricky (mummy gets frustrated and cross and bewildered) when a nap is being dropped and my usually-easy sleeper suddenly resists and stuffs around and is quite happy but also awake when perhaps they should be asleep.

S. I think of her now as my possum baby. Very much driven by awake times instead of clock times. Only now, at 6 months, is she settling into a predictable pattern with a shorter nap in the morning and a longer nap at lunchtime and not usually an afternoon nap. And, for a few months now, has slept most nights for about 12 hours, from after her bath (sometimes with a bottle, sometimes not) until 5 or 6am. It. Is. Bliss. I’m not stuffing around with those naps. This is a baby who sleeps when she needs to sleep, who settles fairly easily if put down when tired but not overtired, who can resettle herself in longer naps and overnight. I know it may not last, and I am hoping hoping hoping that it doesn’t change too much when the sleeping arrangements are given an overhaul in the next few days, but I am astounded and delighted and amazed that I have a baby who does this. 

Buy me a coffee

What We Read This Week (Things are Changing)

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I changed things up this week. Story time remains at bedtime for C, but E and S now have stories after S has a morning feed and before breakfast. And, without any pushing from me, E has started doing stories at bedtime too. Win! 

Tonight after the big girls had finished their bath, E went to the bookshelf and pulled out her current favourite book, a board version of The Gruffalo’s Child, and started reading it. I haven’t read it to her very much. In fact, I don’t think I’ve managed to read it entirely yet as she keeps turning pages for me and getting to the same page and saying the same phrase, over and over, looking very worried, and I don’t know what she is saying but this is clearly very important. I didn’t read it to her tonight though, because C found the Frozen book after months (MONTHS!), months of searching and all was well with the world. She sat on my lap and I started reading it, then E came over and snuggled in and I had my two big girls cuddled around me as I read to them and my heart melted.

Stories in bed in the mornings have been a mix of sensory books and paper story books. Tickle Tickle Peter (a very sweet Peter Rabbit book for S) and That’s Not My Reindeer which always starts in front of S and mysteriously ends up in E’s hands, just like any Bluey book (Bob Bilby is pictured). A new one for E is Cuddles and Snuggles (aww), and both girls are enjoying one of my dearest books, Zin Zin Zin! A Violin! There is a long backstory of how it came to be in our family (I won’t go into that here), and it was the first book that made C smile when she was a baby. All of my girls love it and are really engaged when it is read. 

I realise I should document what C borrows from the school library, too. She gets such a kick out of being able to borrow every single week. This week she brought home two princess books. Of course. Princess Beatrice and the Rotten Robber (Elizabeth Honey), and Barbie Princess Charm School. One I love and the other … I don’t love it. Unfortunately, C feels the opposite. That said, she has picked plot holes throughout the Barbie book so I’m not too disappointed. 

The Start of Tuesday Night Dinners

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I was at a nearby shopping centre yesterday. I had to walk past people trying to talk to people about I don’t even know what. Dinner delivery service or something. This will make your dinnertime so much easier, she called. I smiled and shook my head and kept walking. And then realised: she assumed that I did the cooking. That I would be the one making dinner, maybe prepping it during the day and putting it together at dinnertime while juggling at least one child and the bedtime tired and the end of day hungry. Ha. Wrong! 

No, instead I am married to a man who loves to cook. Who is a fantastic cook. Who will find a recipe on Instagram that he wants to make and then he will just make it. Who has favourite chefs and will find their top tips and recipes and follow their advice. We enjoy lovely food in our family.

At the end of week 2, C came home from school with homework. Oh the excitement! She sat down right away and did most of it in about 10 minutes. At the end of week 3, homework included a sheet with ‘bonus homework activities’. These were things like taking a walk along your street and noting all the places that you could find numbers, or teaching your family hand signs, or asking parents and grandparents where they are from, or helping out at home by making your bed or cleaning your room or helping make dinner. (Side note: I love these teachers!)

After a couple of weeks of thinking, oh we could do one of those extra things… maybe next week…? I finally made a decision. C would help me make heart-shaped pizzas for dinner on Valentine’s Day. And she did! We had a great time and she ate a LOT (rare for her).

Then, this week, I thought about the green mac and cheese that I’ve been wanting to make for months and decided that Tuesday night would be it. And C would help me. And we might make this into a thing, a thing that we do. C helps mummy make dinner on Tuesday nights. 

Because this is a new thing, it is still a totally and utterly crazy thing that makes me question my sanity. Why am I trying to do this when I have a baby doing a short nap? Or needing to get the baby to stay awake because she has clearly decided not to do an afternoon nap because we are in that annoying stage of nap-dropping? Why am I trying to do this when I have a responsible and helpful 4-year-old but also a very enthusiastic just-turned-2-year-old who wants to help with everything and will almost but not quite burn herself at every step of the way?

That said, I think this is a really important thing to do. I have long been a big believer in the benefits of baking and this is just the savoury equivalent. It is teaching me as much as it is teaching the girls. Life skills are important, as are maths skills and creative skills and problem solving (being realistic here, it won’t be long before we start a dish without having all the right ingredients). Learning how to mix different substances while keeping as much of it as possible in the bowl is not something I could have imagined I would need to teach 5 years ago. Yet here were are. 

I don’t have a plan for a dish for this coming Tuesday but I DO know that I will be prepping as much as is humanly possible during the day. Also, recipe suggestions welcome! 

What We Read This Week (Baby Classics)

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It feels an age since I’ve shared what we’ve been reading. I’m putting this down to E being such a different child from C, on top of our home life being a wildly different home life. C would always have a story or five before bed. E was resisting more and more until I just gave up. It makes me sad to say it but it was just too hard. There was only so much I could force her to sit with me and read so I put her story time on the back burner, knowing that we would come back to stories at some point. 

And we did. At this point, I would like to thank Blue. E was given Verandah Santa and Bob Bilby last Christmas. Throughout the year we were also given Sleepytime and Hammerbarn. These books are soooooo well-loved. So much so that I’ve had to remove Sleepytime from sight as E would get obsessed with it and turn the pages too quickly and we all know how that goes. We haven’t found our groove with story time just yet but I am relieved that books are being rediscovered.

C has continued to have at least one story a night and – great excitement – was finally allowed to borrow from the library at school last week. Three nights since then, I went by her bedroom when she was meant to be asleep and heard her telling her toys all about what was in the stories. Libraries are fantastic. She’s a bit sad that she has to return the books tomorrow but rather excited that she can then choose MORE books to borrow! Bliss.

That brings us to S. I am sure that her experience of books is much more interrupted than it was for either of the older girls. “Here is the blue sheep, and here is the WHAT WAS THAT? What was that sound? Ok put that down… And here is the red sheep. Here is the bath sheep E, stop, get down from there, thank you, and here is the bed sheep. But where is no, I said NO, hands off! Gentle… gentle… no sweetie she needs to breathe. Thank you, maybe we can play with it next? But not shoved into her face like that…” etc. That said, this week has been especially lovely. E is past the stage where she pulls so enthusiastically (or intentionally) that any flaps from lift-the-flap books are ripped off. S is in the stage of knowing that this bit of coloured cardboard moves and there’s another picture behind it and ooh look! It’s an elephant! So I have been able to read Dear Zoo (Rod Campbell) to both of them, together, delightfully. This coming week we will also revive some of our other flappy books and I may even get inspired to fix the no-longer-very-flappy books. 

Other books that have been read often this week are Kissed by the Moon (Alison Lester), and Where is the Green Sheep (Mem Fox and Judy Horacek). The former was for S from the Christmas Eve Book Fairy. It was one I borrowed from the local library when C was a baby and I love it. I have read it a few times with all girls around me this week and that is possibly one of my highlights. A beautiful wish for my babies. The latter had been hiding under a sofa for a time so its rediscovery has been a joy. Every pair of sheep brings smiles. Every reading brings smiles.

She’s Only One

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Is it possible? Surely not. E turns two in less than two weeks. This small person, who takes up so much space in our lives and our hearts, who is showing so much development and growth on new levels every day, who is so capable of so so much – she’s only one.

This small person, who loves drawing and painting but not so much on paper, who will maybe draw a little bit on a scrap of paper before scrunching it up and, preferably, dipping it in any nearby spilled water before sliding it to the floor then dropping all the pencils to the floor while saying ‘uh-oh’ as she watches each one hit the floor. Who will tell me each colour as she chooses it, or asks for it, or hands me the pot or the tube saying ‘blue, lid, o? Peeeeese’ with fists up and out and elbows in. Who consistently goes straight to mixing blue and red then tells me, when I ask, that her favourite colour is pur-pur. 

This small person, who is turning babble and nonsense syllables into understandable sentences. Who has evolved from the very sincere, very dramatic, totally unintelligible streams of sound. Who will now say ‘nigh nigh, wub youuuuu’ or ‘she you layer, love you’ and totally and utterly melt my heart. Who will go to the step ladder and hold its side and say, with a Please Face to rival Bluey, ‘mih?’ (mix), hoping that I will consent to some baking. Who will be dancing at the kitchen entrance, be asked to take C’s water bottle to her, have it handed to her from the freezer, and toddle – that particular toddler movement that is faster than a walk but not quite a run – look down at the bottle in her hands and exclaim ‘ooh, fweezy col!’ Who will spend a good 10 minutes of a post-school-drop-off walk singing out ‘daddyyyyy…. Where are youuuu?’ Or tell me, pointing at daddy’s sofa, ‘daddy were’ (daddy work). Or go to where she thinks I am, exclaim ‘huh!’ when I’m not there and then call ‘mummy…. Where ARE you???’

This small person, who will see that daddy has snacks in the kitchen and she will run away down the hallway to the bedroom while saying, almost to herself, ‘co’ (cot’), coming back to a slightly mystified daddy to put on that Please Face again for some chippies please as she has just put her dummy in the cot, where it belongs. A pant of excitement, ‘dadyou’ (thank you), and toddling off with her cracker or chip or blueberry to sit on one of the child-sized chairs to eat her prize. Who will hand you her finished yoghurt pouch saying ‘hinny’ (finished’) or just go to the kitchen and put it in the bin herself. Who will amaze her daycare teachers by clearing her plate and cup after eating. Who will ask, repeatedly, day after day after day, for ‘ah, ah, oooh?’ Which is, of course, an ice cube? And she will often make sure she has her bowl (‘bo’) for us to fill with ice cubes.

This small person, who will climb onto our bed, or remove a lid, or reach something we thought was out of reach, and exclaim ‘I did it!’ Who will be in the bath and lean out and point to toys and when I get it wrong will say ‘no-no’ and keep pointing to what she wants without getting frustrated until I get it right and she nods excitedly and takes it saying thank you. Who will be holding something and say ‘ready, deddy, gooooo’ and you just have to be aware that she is about to throw and she can really throw and although she often throws down the hallway she sometimes just throws a plastic play picnic plate across the living room to clock you on the nose. 

This small person, who loves loves loves singing and dancing. Who will hear the start of the Encanto! soundtrack and seize up in excitement, shake her hands in front, and sing and dance along to the music. Who will scream GOOOOOOOOOOO!! like a banshee at the same point, every time, in Let It Go. Who will sing, in tune, the last word or two in most of the songs from a handful of Disney movies. Who will sing the last word or two or three of every phrase in her favourite tv show tunes.

This small person, who knows her way around an iPad. Who will say, with that killer Please Face, Bluey? to ask if she can watch shows. Who will ask to get out of the cot when it is still too early for anything, give me a cuddle, ask to get down, pick up the iPad from the chair, try to pull my charging cord from my phone but allow me to do that so I can plug it in to the iPad then unlock it and launch ABC Kids. Who is only allowed to use an iPad for ABC Kids and can pause an episode and press the X to exit that episode and press the arrow to go back to a different selection of shows. Who apparently has favourite episodes of certain shows, and regularly picks (saying the correct name) ‘Dark’ for Bing, ‘Rain’ for Bluey, ‘The Dentist’ for Peppa Pig. Who is actually only allowed to use it for ABC Kids but has been known to leave that app and launch all sorts of other apps including, her favourite, the Music app when she sees the Bluey icon up there but will get upset because she actually really wants to keep watching Bluey and not just listen to the music. Who has been known to get the split screen happening. Who will quite confidently get onto the YouTube app and start scrolling through Cocomelon and Wiggles and Laurie Berkner and Super Simple Songs and Frozen and Frozen II and Moana and Encanto! 

This small person, who mostly likes to just wear a nappy because the weather is hot, but can take off that nappy and say ‘toi, lee?’ and then goes through all the steps of going to the toilet before running away from any fresh nappy, squeak-laughing with mischief all the way. Who can half get her own clothes off and on. Who gets herself in and out of the bath with ease, whether or not it’s what she actually wants. (I know. Toddlers.) Who replies with utter mischief and cheekiness. Hm? Whaaaat?! Lear-lee! (Really!)

This small person. She’s only one. 

In a Rare Spell of Calm

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These days are hard, you know? As I write this I am enjoying a rare spell of calm: big girls are watching ABC Kids on my iPad and not getting in each other’s way, I’m brewing a cup of tea and have just had the most delightful cuddle coo and smile session with my littlest. I am also permanently tired, yesterday finished at 11pm(ish), there was a toddler feed just after midnight, today started at 4:10am, I have a good whack of baby vomit on my shoulder and toddler snot on my skirt and smears of peanut butter here and there and very little patience for the rude behaviour that my biggest girl is exhibiting I think in anticipatory nerves about big school next year. Yikes. 

There has been so much in our life in the last few months. Much of it medical, some of it wonderful and some… not so wonderful. But it all makes a life, all makes our life. 

There has been Covid and associated hospitalisation and worry and never-ending coughing and rivers of snot. There has been the birth of our new baby, still very new, still amazement in my head that she is here and we are now a family of 5 but also that feeling that she was always meant to be here and now she is. There has been post-surgical infection with hospitalisation and worry and intense pain and weeks and weeks of nurse visits and reinfection and more pain and more antibiotics and being attached to a machine that flashes and buzzes and cannot get wet. There has been brain fog, intense brain fog that wasn’t really apparent until it started to lift. The sort that had me finally filling in the enrolment form for C for next year and stopping at the very first item – Name – and not being able to work out which name to put there. The sort that has me unable to do the simplest of crochet rounds. I no longer take for granted the ability to think things through and remember to respond to people and do more than one thing in a day.

I’m hoping that our medical life can go back to normal now. I’m hoping I don’t have to be at the doctor again until the 4 month checkup at Christmas. I’m hoping I can have more space to enjoy this time, hard as it is. 

Space to enjoy and marvel at the new life that has joined us. Such a new person, with hair and eyes and nose and chin and cheeks and amazing fingers and soft skin. Space to enjoy snuggles with a little bundle, plump tummy with relaxed floppy arms and legs bent, heavy head falling into my shoulder. The warmth of a little baby, so new and delicate, needing to be close. Space to discover little things like eyelashes and eyebrows and hair and eyes and fingernails and toenails and elbows and dimples and facial expressions.

Space to enjoy and delight in her big sisters being big sisters, stroking her hair and replacing a dummy and holding her hand and getting down on the floor with her in tummy time and feeding her a bottle and being excited to see her in the mornings and after daycare. 

Space to enjoy and be present in play. Taking all the girls outside or to the park, baby asleep in the carrier, big girls running around and dancing and scooting and walking along walls and picking leaves to give me ‘money’ or make me a ‘cake’ and doing ring-a-ring-a-rosie and removing sandals before standing on prickles then looking at me with a wobbly lip of betrayal. 

Even though today has been tough, I am sitting here writing while the baby sleeps in her bassinet nearby and the big girls are playing calmly together with blocks and I have tears in my eyes, happy tears that this is my life. How lucky am I?!

What We Read This Week (E’s Choice)

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We are back to having a pile of books on my sofa. They are mostly E choices as C joins in for E’s story time and then usually asks for another story when she’s in bed.

Bob Bilby is a very popular choice. Board books just take one element of juggling away. Usually E is clambering all over me, trying to reach things behind me on the back of the sofa or craning to see what daddy is up to in the kitchen or playing with a washer or bath toy and then dropping it and lurching as far over the sofa arm as she can to see it. Not having to worry about her tearing book pages is just a relief. And she loves turning these pages herself and trying to pull off the pictures that look like they’ve been stuck on.

That said… she is learning gentle hands for page turning. Several paper-page books have been explored without any ripping so maybe we are out of that phase. Well, maybe not. But we are on the way though, definitely. So we have been able to read Hairy Maclary from Donaldson’s Dairy (Lynley Dodd); This and That (a favourite, by Mem Fox and Judy Horacek); Goldilocks (the First Readers version); and The Wonky Donkey (Craig Smith and Katz Cowley). 

For a few months, I would play The Wonky Donkey on my phone on the way to daycare (thank you Apple Music). We’ve had a break on that for a while, and had a break on reading the story for a while, but it came out again this week and E’s face lights up every time. 

Remember the Positive

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This week has been tough. And I mean, really, really, really, tough. But when I was thinking about how tough it has been, a little voice popped into my head with ‘oh but there was also -‘ so I want to remember those things too, preferably more than the other, less positive things.

Out with the tough things. I always prefer bad news first. (Although, there wasn’t really any bad news.)

We are back to screeching baby. Not AS much in the wee small hours but that is largely because I made her a quiet activity box. It took all of my Tuesday evening. And she does play with it, just mostly by picking it up and looking up into it and flapping the flaps. (I know she will work it out a bit more over time so Second Time Mum me isn’t too disheartened.)

Screeching baby is also occurring frequently at food times. Right into my ears. She is very very loud. I am not ok. It is easier if I give her food to feed herself but she is also a fan of dropping something just for fun and then watching where it falls and I’m just not that much a fan of cleaning.

C has been continuing to need me to be with her while she falls asleep. I am ok with this – and I know I will miss it when she tells me she doesn’t need me anymore – but only up to a point. That point is about 8pm. Wednesday she didn’t fall asleep until 9pm, Thursday somewhere around 9:15. Tonight, after I was in my starting-to-get-frustrated zone especially knowing she was so down on her sleep, I resorted to patting her bottom like I did when she was a baby and toddler while singing the rainbow chameleon song. Asleep 8:15, but I was so spent it felt like 9:15 at least.

Of course, when one or both girls requires my attention for hours at night, it cuts into my Me Time. And I need my Me Time. Not just to check social media or to watch a show, but to do my craft or crochet or write. I really feel it when I don’t get to be Anna at all and have to be Mummy until exhausted and spent.

However, there were some definite delights this week.

This morning, E crawled (and she is speedy) from the play zone at one end of our place, past the books and the sofa shortcut and blocks table and tempting cords and kitchen, all the way down the hallway and into C’s room and onto her bed to wake her up. Thankfully C was happy to see her.

Riding on daddy’s shoulders has become E’s new favourite thing to do. And when up there she often does little two-tone sing-song sighs that I remember C doing as well. A sign of contentment that makes my heart happy.

Wednesday was the Australia Day public holiday. Although we’re not happy with our national day being this date, we took it as an opportunity to educate our girls in some of our culture. We did wattle paintings. We did a southern cross painting. Breakfast was like a camping big breakfast: sausage, grilled mushrooms with cheese, egg on a redback. C had her first fairy bread. We had lamingtons with jam and cream. We had sausage rolls with coleslaw and sweet potato fries for dinner. 

C has been wanting the lullaby from Frozen 2 in the evenings so guess what I’ve been learning… but so has she. And it turns out she has a great memory for melody and lyrics.

The girls had their first proper bath together. Total chaos with splashing and laughter on repeat. It was only marred by E getting her scream on because she was obviously very tired and needing to be in bed but also loving splashing in a bath with C. 

After teething for months (it felt) with one bottom tooth popping up unexpectedly early on and four top teeth playing peekaboo, all four top teeth are through. Phew.

Perhaps the highlight of my week was E starting to clap properly. C started this at 7 months and although I think I’ve been fairly good in not comparing them, this was starting to worry me. E would put her hands together but then move them up and down, or take them apart and hit the table. Until yesterday, when real and proper clapping started. I am SO relieved. And E is obviously pretty happy with herself too.

The last exciting thing is we are starting to plan E’s first birthday party. I love planning parties and working out cake and decorations and snacks and the theme and invitations. Plus, a first birthday is such an achievement. It feels especially so with E.

The best game we have been playing this week has been what I think of as Construction/Destruction. C loves to build amazing towers with blocks. E is in the pull everything apart stage. So we race. C and I try to build up as fast as we can and E pulls the blocks off and then apart. It is crazy and chaotic but loads of fun.

So here’s to a quieter weekend with easier sleep but still some fun chaos. Please.

Sisters

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Having a second child is such a gamble. Will they get on? Will they fight? Will they support each other? Will they play together nicely? 

From the moment we told C she was going to be a big sister, I haven’t had to worry too much. Her reaction was along the lines of ‘yeah, I knew this was going to happen’ and pretending to play (beautifully) with her imaginary little sister for the next few months until her actual real life little sister came home from the hospital. And that was next level beautiful.

One of my most treasured memories of that first morning at home is having the bassinet next to the dining table, E probably sleeping inside it, C sitting on her chair ‘reading’ Goldilocks to her, very quietly, while the adults all flurried around them. 

Yes, there are times – some days many more than others – when I worry, really worry, about how they are getting on and if we’ll be having an accident or an injured baby or hair pulling or head kicks or something swallowed. 

But then there are other times, and I delight in them and their sisterhood.

Like when C asks if she can please feed E. And does, often far more successfully than I do. She makes sure to alternate food with water. She reciprocates raspberries when E gets happy and starts blowing them. C picks up the dropped spoons and cups and toys, over and over. E has started to do things to make C laugh, like dribbling out water instead of swallowing it and then chuckling.

Or when C sings Twinkle, or Baa Baa Black Sheep, or Wheels on the Bus. And E has started singing back to her or us which is making our musician souls so happy.

Or when I wake up in the morning to giggles and squeak laughs, finding C playing while E is still in the cot. Peekaboo is the best, and passing a squishy mango around, or hanging a sparkly monkey by its tail on the cot rails.

Or when C does a fake sneeze and E starts belly laughing. Repeat for 10+ minutes. (This has been the funniest thing all year for us. It was a new laugh for E, full-bodied and uncontrolled and finding these fake sneezes the funniest thing ever in her life so far.)

And there are other, smaller things. C saying that, actually, E is her best friend. E perking up when she hears C coming up the stairs. C telling me she is loving, really loving, having E doing full days at daycare now. E looking adoringly at C as she sucks down a feed. C getting excited to have a bath with E. E throwing each bath toy in the bath to C and both of them giggling as the fun of bubbles is discovered.

I know there are likely tough teenage years ahead. And it’s not always easy now, especially as E is still fascinated by C’s hair and each is likely to kick the other in the head accidentally. But there is so much in the way they are together that fills me with such joy and delight. I love the way they are being sisters to each other.