One Year Old!
Comments(0) Freddie! You’re one today. You’re a real little boy! Here are some of the new things you’ve come up with:
- “uh oh” – you repeated this back to Nick last night, and our jaws hit the floor! Not sure if this counts as a first word, but it was pretty neat.
- You started day care, which has actually been a lot easier than we expected. The carers there love you!
- Crawling really fast, and standing all the time. You even “push-walk” things, so real walking is probably only a couple of months away at most.
- Fridays are with Grandma, which is fun. She likes it (we think), and you like it too!
- Exploring the garden. We try and keep it pretty neat, but you always seem to get to the parts we’re trying to keep you out of.
- No swaddling at bedtime anymore. So now you try out a whole heap of different sleeping positions. Very entertaining for us.
- You also love the dust pan and brush. Can’t explain this, aside from you watching us clean up so much. Whatever makes you happy, kid!
And here is a birthday note from your Aunt, which is worth keeping for later:
One year old today! Happy birthday little fella!
It sounds like you’ve had a massive year. I can’t wait to see you at Christmas and catch up on all of your news. I know, I was a tiny little bit scared of breaking you last time we hung out, but I think I’ve gotten past that now. I have spent a lot of time hanging out with kids this year. And I’ve discovered that kids are a lot tougher and less breakable than I thought they were.
You should see what the kids in Timor get up to! They work so hard, pushing big carts of water bottles from the village water pipe to their homes, going to the market at dawn to buy food for their families’ breakfast, collecting firewood, walking five kilometres to school everyday. But they also find time to play. They don’t have many toys, but what they do have brings endless hours of joy. Often it’s something as simple as inner-tube tyre races down the street, or little cars made out of a water bottle body and bottle top wheels tied to a piece of string that they will run up and down the road pulling behind them. They will play hacky sack with a flower or marbles with bottle tops for hours on end.
And boy do they love to swim. In the river, in the sea, in the fast-flowing irrigation channels in Maliana, where the kids have just as much fun, if not more, than your Dad and I used to have at the Amazons waterpark when we were kids. When it rains it pours, and the streets are full of kids running around going nuts for the big fat raindrops which wash all the dirt and dust away.
One of the great things about being a kid in Timor is you’re never alone. You always have a gang of friends, cousins, brothers and sisters to play with. And goats and monkeys and roosters and dogs.
I’m not sure about goats and monkeys and roosters in Stanmore, but it sounds like you’re going to have lots of big friends and little friends to celebrate your birthday with tomorrow. I hope you have an awesome party! Birthdays are the best, aren’t they?
I’m looking forward to celebrating many more with you.
Big hugs and big kisses,
Aunty Sal