This Christmas...

I do love Christmas. Even though its sub-zero outside and the shops are rammed with shoppers clambering for their final festive gifts, I can't help but feel utterly wonderful at this time of year. 
Since having Dee, life has become most hectic and Christmas has been no different. Christmas shopping with a pram is about as much fun as watching George 0sborne read the budget. Not very. 
However, having a child at Christmas is like, well, being a child at Christmas. Putting the decorations up this year has seemed ever more special just because I couldn't wait to see little Dee's face the moment she saw them. Of course she was utterly dazzled by my (non-dazzling) tree, sitting in front of it for an age this morning just watching the lights twinkle and laughing with pure glee. 

Even though she is still far too young to properly understand the true meaning of Christmas or who the big man in the red suit is, but the anticipation of all our future Christmases was etched in her beautiful face this morning and it filled me with the kind of joy only a mother can truly feel. 

I can't wait to begin traditions with her. Growing up with divorced parents I felt something was always missing around this time of year. We never watched Christmas films or played in the snow together. Whilst pregnant I thought of all the things I wanted to give my daughter - and aside from love and care, Christmas traditions was the top of the list. Children are simple creatures, they find complete joy in the innocent and simple , this is what makes them so precious. 

A Frosty Walk

I look forward to stockings over the fire, carol singing, visits to Father Christmas, hot chocolate with marshmallows and mulled wine on Christmas Eve. I look forward to snow angels, gingerbread houses, colourful wrapping paper strewn across the sitting room. Most of all I look forward to plenty of magical Christmases with my perfect little family...together. 

Love till next time -  L&L x

A pocketful of memories.

The husband is away tonight and for one reason or another I thought it would be appropriate to reminisce. I've not been too proactive in getting my blog up and running - day to day life with a one year old seems to leave me as tired as an elf on Christmas morning. But I have decided that (as a rather premature NY resolution) I'm going to take this writing lark a little more seriously.

Tonight I indulged my emotions in a most peculiar way; I read an old, old online diary that I started in 2004. I have always dipped in and out of diary keeping, choosing to write about the times in my life which I have found most painful or emotionally draining. I used this act of writing as a cathartic experience. Looking back over entries (which began when I was 19 and concluded when I was 24) I still hear the person I once was, even though at times the words on the page are hard to stomach.

For the last few hours I have laughed and cried and cringed at the heartache I felt through first loves. I can't believe how broken I was, how emotionally fragile and at times, deeply sad.
Some entries were harder to read than others, I felt as though I wanted to comfort the person who had written such heart-wrenchingly sad prose. I wish I could go back and tell my then-self that everything was got to be ok. That I was to be loved.

And now, more than ever, I can't believe how much becoming a mother has changed me. How all those first loves are so totally irrelevant compared to the love I feel everyday from my perfect little girl. How lucky I am...and how far I have come.

This blog is going to be a record of my life. A time has come to write of the happiness that now surrounds me rather than the sadness in which I drowned myself for so many years.

Here's to writing - Cheers!


Love till next time -  L&L x