two high fives

She is now five months old. FIVE! I know. I am a walking cliché again to be so mama-amazed at that. And I don't care. I have only just turned around and blinked a couple of times since her birth and yet here she is all out of new born-ness and into the grabby chewy stage of gurgling screams. Five little, long, tine snapping,days often achingly long, bitter sweet, gone-in-a-flash months. Every day she seem to get cuter. Warning!! This is a 'mommy blog' or something... although, what are they anyway? I am guessing the ones where every post is about how their baby learned to clap that day or maybe smiled at the postman. Well yes. Those things are pretty exciting. When you are a baby or when you are a mother viewing the world through your babies eyes. I get it. Seeing everything all over again. For the very first time. It's AMAZING. When you look at our world it is sort of crazy. Some of the stuff we do and say is just weird. And little babies take it all in their stride. Everything is normal, fine and good and well. As long as they are in your arms. Why yes they may nod and blink totally nonplussed as a lion backflips into a pavlova. And why shouldn't that happen? That's why magic shows don't work for really little kids. Because the world is so crazy/magic/normal it's all one and the same.

 Anyway back to baby gah-gahing. Which is about all I am up for right now. She is my little flower fairy. Also, I am sorry sweet one but you have inherited your Daddy's ears. Nothing I could do to stop that from happening. 1/4 kids though. The rest have my little neat ones. Lets just hope her hair grows in long and thick (kidding, sorta, she is too delicious for me to care).

 This next one was sort of an out-take. One of those ones that stays on your disc and never sees the light of day. But honestly?! She has the funniest faces of anyone. She makes me laugh every day. Has this sublime way of making her face slack and amazed. Thus erasing what I said above about babies taking it all in their stride.

 And then she can be all, no way. I am so not impressed.

 Honestly she'd scare me if I knew she wasn't just the squidgiest softest, nicest smelling, kissable human baby on the planet. Also those knits I knit pre-birth. She has used them all up. Every last one. At five months she tops the scales and growth charts for a one year old. So my knitted items tell me. Outgrown. If only I had time to knit more! Alas no. So she has wrists peeping from her cardigans. We can live with it. She is still dressed in the clothes of luurve.


 Here she is with my mum and Esmé. I love seeing my mum with them both.

 Her sister gets the most smiles x10 than anyone else. She is memorised by Esmé who has all the time in the world, plus some extra, for her baby sister. The sun and moon and stars? They are Iona for Esmé. I am pretty much in love with just seeing them together.

 It's a nice change from the way Esmé screams at everyone else and gets her own way through violence and mayhem and pure will (power). Well her weakness and strengths lie in her love for Iona. Because she is like a bit of raspberry play-dough for her. With added glitter. All sweetness and fun.

 Esmé just turned Five. Five years. Another sort of where-is-my-life-sieving-away-too? My bright little star girl. She is beautiful. And the Queen. She is our sunshine and thunder clap all at once. Fiery and bright and oh so hot. Sweetness and the darkest night. And just when you despair at her contrariness there she is beaming with a gift of a sea shell. Just today she screeched, 'no! I do NOT want chicken!' While forking some happily into her mouth . And that is who she is. That one little thing captures her pretty well.

 The cake! She had high specifications as you might have guessed. Heart shaped. Pink. Umbrellas. Sweet shop. Marshmallows. Lemon. Eleven layers. I laughed her out of the eleven layers (as it was I made it in the middle of the night while dashing back and forth to check twitchy-cannot-sleep-alone babe). So one thick layer. But super yes to everything else.

Over the years I have gone from making some hard won healthy birthday cakes to going flat out to what ever whimsy their hearts desire. It's a birthday, not every day cake. C' mon. But it was at least gluten free. And cow dairy free. She can handle everything else she tells me. I just agree. Mostly to anything that keeps her in happy mode. It's the default setting of any mother with multiple children. I know it.

 She lost her first tooth on New Years Eve and since then two more. The fairies left a little door in our kitchen so as to visit us more often. They exchange notes and fairy dust and teeth and silver coins with this big wobbly toothed girl. A thread of rainbow yarn tied to her bed wound down to show her on New years Day this little door and it has been featured highly in conversation game and art since. One secret little word I shall whisper if you were wondering: Etsy.

Also the big thing so far this year for Esmé has been taking part in a real ballet show. She was a bumble bee in Snow White. I only have this one pic taken backstage as she anxiously waited in line for make up. Let me say the make up was the best part of the whole thing for her. She said reverently she felt almost like a Barbie. I try not to shudder just hope for better things while externally I laughed like a loon and told her yes, we all must dream big as she skipped with her bumble bee antennae bobbing around her head so happily.

Hardly a thing any parent dream their daughter will say but the thing is, I just want her to love what she loves. If it's Barbie and ballet and pink cakes with cocktail umbrellas, so what? High fives really. At least she knows what it is she loves. So many people don't.

 I will comeback soon and update again with lovely Boy Stuff. And also with some URBAN house moving stuff that's on our agenda (I know! It's necessary for the sanity and togetherness of our family).

Last pics: obligatory baby feet pic

my biggest and littlest having a chat

Isaac yielding the camera (too early for me to be dressed or looking decent but oh well).

 And Esmé cross because Isaac asked her to smile. Not many of me and my girls so I'll take it.

 Baby in daddy-arms being bounced to sleep on the exercise ball (best thing ever for babies)

 And another two from today, my sweet Iona (ohnee-moanie we like to call her, in affection - of course). Nothing to do with her random bursts of screaming/crying. Unfathomable and perplexing and leaves us all huddled in shivering quivering nerve wrecked heaps. She is still the most lovely baby, so Felix tells me. And he is always right.