We have an 8 year old in the house.
The living room is full of scraps of wrapping paper and new toys and there’s half a Victoria sponge cake still to be eaten, after Nerys’ birthday at the weekend.
She spent all of the half term holiday in a state of anticipation, so excited that her birthday was coming up.
I took her to Cardiff on Friday to go to build-a-bear which she had been wanting to do for months. She choose one of the birthday bears, with a strawberry scent, and dressed it in a purple t-shirt with a rainbow design on the front. She also made it so when you squeeze the bear’s paw it sings a few lines from ‘get back up again’ from Trolls.
Back when she was in year one at school her teacher used to play that song every morning before doing the register, and you could hear the children singing along when you walked past the classroom and it made me smile every single time. I just thought it was such a lovely way to start the day, and I love that Nerys then chose it for her bear too.
On her birthday we went out for tea cakes and milkshakes at a local cafe and then played at the park for a bit, before heading home and enjoying an afternoon of pass the parcel and lego-building.
She also humoured me and let me take our annual photo of her on her baby blanket.
She asked me how long we’ll keep doing these photos, and I said for as long as you’re happy to do them!
I just really love it as a little record of how she’s changed over the years, from this first picture wrapped in the blanket at one month old, to a smiling one-year-old, to the girl she is now.
At 8 years old she’s already taller than my shoulder and seems so grown up in so many ways. She is funny, and kind, and thoughtful and still just really lovely company.
Oh, and if you read last week’s living arrows post where I so optimistically said that I hoped for a semi-normal, covid-free half term you might be wondering if we managed it. Which of course we didn’t!
Steve was the final member of the family to catch the virus, and spent the whole week (including Nerys’ birthday) trying to keep away from the rest of us seeing as we’re still not entirely sure how likely it is to get re-infected at the moment.
This has to be it now though right?! Please tell me we can maybe have a bit of time now without someone in the house having covid!
Lovely photos. Where did all those years go?
It’s scary how the time flies by isn’t it! x
I hope Nerys had a lovely birthday – it certainly sounds like she did, even if her dad did have covid! I love that you have the traditional photo too – we used to have a few photo traditions too but they all seem to have been forgotten in the last few years.
Happy Birthday Nerys! I hope she had a lovely day. I adore this series of photos, so beautiful to look back on! x