Happy Birthday Lulu

So, my wee baby is four, and although it sort of makes me sad to see her growing up, I’m so proud of the beautiful little girl she has become.  Lulu is the easiest person in the world to love, and I fell in love with her the minute she was born.  It was a speedy birth, the labour lasting only three and a half hours.  When she emerged she paused before crying briefly, and then rested quietly on my chest, peering blurrily around the room.  After she was cleaned up and wrapped in a blanket, we settled her in the bassinet next to my bed, and she lay quietly taking the world in.I wasn’t too sure what to make of this – a baby who wasn’t crying! – but she was an incredibly content baby.  I would take her into bed with me for the morning breast feed and we would both fall asleep while she fed, snuggled up together in a warm little cocoon.  For the rest of her babyhood she was a sweet, adorable, quiet wee baby who simply adored her older sister and was adored in return.  We almost started to worry that she would live in the shadow of her boisterous sister.  Then at the age of seven months, on a family holiday to Queensland, she suddenly found her voice and started to assert her own personality.

Lulu never crawled, she was a bum shuffler who wore out the bottom of every single pair of trousers she owned, until she realised walking was a better idea.  Funnily enough she loves crawling now, when she’s pretending she is a cat, or a dog, or a pony.  Lulu loves to tuck a ribbon into her waistband and pretend its a tail, and from then on she will converse only in meows, or woofs (the pony doesn’t appear to talk much).

Lulu has endless love to give.  As I rush about in the morning getting ready for work she follows me around begging for a hug and a kiss at every opportunity, and when I drive her to pre-school she spontaneously tells me that she loves me.  When I get home in the evening I can hear her cry of “Mummmeeeee” as soon as I walk in the door, and no day can ever end without a huge squeezy hug as I tuck her in at night.

There is nothing more comforting in the world than a cuddle with Lulu.  She melts in my arms and wraps herself around me, a warm little bundle of love.  We still snuggle in bed in the mornings, just as we did when she was a baby, but now she climbs in by herself, and asks to be tickled.  She endures a tickling as long as she can bear it before begging me to stop, and after a small pause pleading with me to start again.

Since she started her new pre-school in Auckland she has started to follow in her sister’s bossy-boots footsteps, and her teachers have noted her “leadership abilities”.  She is a bright little spark who seems ready for school already.  Happy Birthday my little Lulu, thank you for coming into the world.  It is such a pleasure to love you.