Sunday was Astrid’s second birthday. Monday mummy and daddy noticed Astrid has got even cuter. Again. Sunday morning mummy couldn’t pull herself together to stop crying. She cried and cried and cried and just wanted to stop all this sickness and make everyone better again and to go home and never be so silly as to leave ever again. But we tried to make a nice birthday for Astrid. We wrapped up warm, got Astrid into the buggy. Shoes off, sleeping bag on. All snug little bugglie. The cold wind made our runny noses cold. We walked up to Hampstead and were all suddenly very very hungry and we went to we cannot believe it MacDonalds for chips. For birthday chips.
Astrid likes birthday chips in the warm. With tomato sauce. Astrid is a big fan of tomato sauce on anything. Astrid is even a big fan of tomato sauce on its own. Astrid also likes strawberries, yoghurt, sausages, roast pork, rice crackers with peanut butter, rice crackers with vegemite. Astrid loves tomatoes and she likes soup. She like to dunk her buttered vogels bread in her soup. Her favourite soup is tomato soup. Astrid used to love asparagus but she doesn’t any more. Strawberries are her favourite. Bananas are also quite good. Usually whatever mummy is eating is best, but it must be fed to Astrid by daddy using mummy’s fork.
Astrid can say no very well. She can shake her head most profusely. Sometimes that might also mean yes. Astrid is also good at pointing. Often she’ll point up to the kitchen cupboard, which we think means vegemite. Sometimes it also means banana. Pointing at the biscuit tin often means rice cracker. Pointing at the fridge might mean yoghurt. Or strawberries. Or jam. Often we are totally wrong and Astrid ends up with a pile of The Wrong Food. And, she also likes peas.
Sometimes.
Astrid whilst good at shaking her head, as in I… Am… Shaking… My… Head… And… That… Is… A… Definite… No… doesn’t have such an action for yes. So we taught her the Astrid wiggle, which involves shaking the body and head from the waist up from side to side. The Astrid wiggle means yes. These past weeks however we seem to have lost the Astrid wiggle. Lost in time along with our favourite ever Astrid passtime, the Astrid purr.
Astrid likes Teletubbies again. She gave them up at one but they’re back in her good books it would appear. In the Night Garden is quite good, but her absolute favourite is The Simpsons. Which she watches with Daddy every night at 7 o’clock. Her second favourite thing to watch is the DVD lead-in for In The Night Garden. We think it’s the music.
Astrid is very well dressed. The labels Astrid will wear are Anemone, 6.5st and a+b. She also wears Flora and Henri and Nature Baby. She is especially fond of Linnet fabrics, Nani Iro, merino and charcoal cotton. Her current favourite outfit is Linnet wool trousers lined with grey organic double gauze, with Petit Bateau tights in aubergine, navy stripe singlet and navy stripe bodysuit by Nature Baby, with either her a+b yellow wool floral Linnet smock top, or her 6.5st pink Linnet apron top.
Astrid we believe is saving up her sentences for later. She understands everything that’s going on. That we do know. After lunch every day she will gather everyone’s shoes and hand each person their correct shoes and socks so everyone can go out. Astrid likes to tidy things up. She’s very good at clearing up at the end of the day, putting books back on shelves, toys back in boxes, rubbish in the bin. She doesn’t like to leave any mess lying around and all laundry is put in the laundry basket before we go downstairs in the morning.
So far we’ve been graced with a smattering of words. Tiger was the first. Now we’ve had bin, apple, water, mummy, daddy, hello, hiya, yah yah yah yah yah (at the same time as the Astrid Wiggle) – but no word for no yet.
Well, young Astrid – it’s been quite the year for all of us, you’ve learnt to walk, started to talk, we’ve moved countries, made lots of new friends, entertained a lot of people here who find your quirky little habits very endearing, soldiered through this awful English winter, you’ve made sure your parents are kept very busy and filled our lives with your mad humour, your enormous grin, your cheerful smile and your sweet love for life and for us and the pussy cats.
We love having you, the Astrid Dimension, in our lives – you just get better every day. And long may this adventure continue.
Happy birthday beautiful girl !!!!
We love you so very much xoxox
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