My August

August went by in two seconds. Lovely month with two trips to Sweden. One longer in the beginning and a shorter weekend one in the end. The first trip was really special because David's family came - his parents, sister, sister's partner and son. We also had amazing weather the whole week. Over 30 degrees every day which is unheard of for that long in summer time. But the best thing of all is that we were all gathered in Stockholm - my family and D's family - for our wedding. Me and D got married in the City Hall in Stockholm on August 2nd. That date is a decade after we first met in Dublin.

After the wedding we all went to Häringe slott which is an old manor house turned hotel. We had the wedding reception there with our families - we were ten people in total. We then stayed at the hotel for 2 nights enjoying the pool, sea, floating sauna, canoes and tennis courts around there. We had an amazing time together.

July is here

We are now in the first week of July! I can't believe how quickly summer came.

We have already had a week of holidays in June, when we went to Mallorca and myself and D went on a 3 day romantic getaway to the lovely island of Formentera. I was really  nervous about leaving our little K behind - not for his sake but for mine. I had never spent a single night away from him. I almost cried when I kissed him goodbye, but after a few hours I was fine. Me and D had a lovely time in Formentera with the pristine beaches and the amazing food. We ate fish every day! Meanwhile, K was having a ball with his aunties going to the beach and the swimming pool. He loved it. He even learned to dive with his head under the water and just kept saying "mas! mas!"(="more! more!") in Spanish. A little dolphin is what he turned into :-)

Now we are in the month  of July and hoping for better weather so we can go to the parks and play with K. Fingers x-ed we get some proper good weather soon!

Selfie

We had a long weekend as the first Monday in May is a bank holiday. So needed. It's been a good few busy weeks at work and at home so we just needed some good family time. We took K took the swimming pool since it's been a while since we last took him. He didn't remember what to do and didn't like it at all at first. After about 10 minutes he started relaxing a bit more and enjoyed splashing around for a bit chasing daddy with me holding him and helping him chase. I'm happy he finally enjoyed it as we'll soon be going to Majorca and there we'll hopefully be able to swim some more with him in the sea.

Another thing we did, that we haven't done in a while is go out for dinner just me and D. We have just had date nights in Spain when the grandparents can babysit. Now we found a babysitter in London who lives close to where we live. Brilliant! So me and D went out on a date. We went to a restaurant that I chose - Arbutus in SoHo with a Michelin star. Food was amazing and we had  great time. K had gone to sleep well with the babysitter. He understood that it wasn't like every other night as someone new was there, but he seemed to have accepted it. Hopefully we can do this more often now, that we can leave K with the babysitter. A big step for all of us!

K is walking

The feeling when you see your child take his first steps... Incredible. You feel happy, proud...amazed. He's now walking everywhere exploring, poking, examining all kinds of things. The ground, holes in the wall, dog hairs, flowers... No discrimination in what gets examined - disgusting or not. This is the time when we as parents get to do a lot of running and yelling - "no, don't put that in your mouth!", "don't touch that!", "stop licking the seats in the tube!" and "don't stick your hands in the toilet!" - in order to try and stop certain undesirable events from occurring. It's fun but quite tiring! Gotta go and put my runners on - to keep up with the little one. Heels? Forget it!

Happy first birthday K!

2 days ago my little boy turned one year old. I can't believe a whole has gone by since he was born. The feeling when I held him in my arms for the first time. Incredible, wonderful, beautiful... All the great adjectives you can think of - that. I still feel like the luckiest woman alive, having such a great family ❤❤❤.

K didn't notice his birthday was different from other days, I think. I banged a cake for him and brought it to his nursery. Hopefully he liked it. We also received so many greetings from our friends and extended family. It made me really happy. Just warms my heart to know that there is so much love out there for my son who is just a year old. Amazing.

The Beatles are right:

All you need is love

Merry Christmas

Yesterday was Christmas eve. We celebrated Christmas in London with my family and some friends. It was lovely to have everyone at our new home to celebrate K's first Christmas. K's baby friend L was there with her friends and she gave him lots of kisses and cuddles. It was so funny to watch!

Father's day

Two days ago it was Father's day in Sweden. I don't like Swedish father's day anymore. It reminds me too much of dad. It is still hard. I don't know if I will ever get used to it. I miss him so much and it still feels like he should be here with us. It is still hard. But life goes on...whether we want to or not.

Back to work

Summer finally ended and we managed to squeeze in so many things right at the end of it: Christening of a friend's daughter in Istanbul, hen party and stag do in London two consecutive weekends, visitors from Spain and Sweden, wedding in Czech republic and K's christening in Mallorca.

The day after coming home, it was time for K to start settling in at nursery. I had been dreading this day for a long time and tried not to think about it too much. But the day came and he actually seemed to enjoy being there. It was such a huge relief to see him playing with a musical toy and enjoying himself while I was leaving the first day. The rest of the week went in a similar fashion. I can only say "thank god" for that because the following week I was back at work.

That brings us up to this week. It was a good week at work. I jumped right into a new role at work which is being the team leader of the team I used to work in. It felt good to come back in that way. I didn't worry too much about K which was good, and I quickly got back into the swing of things. I feel slightly overwhelmed about all the things I need to get done before Christmas though... But so far so good!

 K after landing in London coming from Mallorca

After K's first swin in the sea

 Grandma came over to cuddle with her grandchild

The hen party that I organised. Here after makeovers at Chanel 

 We also drove karts!

Mr.Frequent flyer on the plane from Istanbul His first tooth on its way out here but we didn't discover until the following day

So many things

My little boy is now 7 months and 2 weeks old. Since I last wrote he's learned how to do the Indian wo wo wo sound with a little help of course, he has 2 cute little teeth in his bottom jaw, and he had just started sleeping in his own room. I know I might be boring some people with these leaps of progress but I just find it amazing. It was never amazing when I heard friends' kids did all these things. It's amazing because it's my son, the little creature who couldn't do much besides eat, cry and poo a few months ago. Now he's showing his strong will through sounds and gestures, he has a sense of humour.  He loves to laugh and to make me and his daddy laugh and we just have so much fun together goofing around.

I love being a mum. With everything it includes. The joy, frustration, happiness and worries. The good outweighs the bad so many times over it's rediculous. I'm so thankful for my life. If there is such a thing as karma then I must have done something really good to deserve it.

My baby is almost 7 months old!

Yesterday me, K and D were out in the sunshine. We went for a walk and then we chilled for a bit in a hammock in our local park. So much love in a hammock!