One year!

I can’t quite believe we have had a whole year of loving you upon your arrival! People often say it goes so fast and in so many ways it does!

You will always be our babies but at the moment you are most definitely our little people. It has been an absolute pleasure to watch you grow and develop.

Parenting can be very challenging and I know that I have found certain days and times very difficult. Yet through these difficulties I have constantly thought about how very lucky we are to have you both in our arms.

I guess when you have suffered the losses we have and birthed children that didn’t come home then even when both babies are screaming with teething and colds, we carry you in our arms and remember just how fortunate we are.

Watching you learn to communicate with sign language and body language with your understanding growing everyday is incredible.

I have never known such a rewarding (even with my paid rewarding job), humbling and extraordinary experience as to raise the two of you!

I am by far not a perfect mum and I question everyday if I am doing ok at raising you both. We don’t want you to be rich, successful, academic or anything else unless this is what you want for yourselves. What we want is for you to be happy.

Everyday I reflect on the day and think how many times have you both laughed? I want your childhood and adulthood to be filled with happiness and laughter.

I want to guide you into kind, caring and respectful people. I want to protect you from the cruelty of the world for as long as possible and if it does intrude into your minds or hearts then I want to be able to comfort you in a way that makes the days easier.

I want so much for you that we were not able to give to our other babies and sometimes this feels so raw because you two babies are the most important and special ones in our lives.

We tried to make your first birthday so special by filling it with faces of the people in your lives that mean so much to us all.

We never got to make any of these memories or milestones with Kora and Ava and so your first birthday to us was hugely important because you give us the gift of you everyday!

I hope as you grow you will be able to look back on all the things we try to do for you and I hope that you will feel the love and laughter that we try and give every single day.

I hope that although you will have no memory of your first birthdays, you will look back on the photos and the faces in them and know just how much you are treasured and loved.

We don’t take photos to post or upload to show off any part of our parenting, we take them and post them for you to have the memories to hold onto forever.

We do this as we both lost our mums young and of course lost our babies so we know more than most just how special these moments are. We know that we are the luckiest people to have been blessed with two remarkable little humans!