Two

My gorgeous boy is two years old today. I do not know why I am quite so proud. I am terribly proud. I am proud to bursting. I want to tell everyone – look, my beautiful boy, he’s two!

When I picked him up from the barnehage yesterday, there was a valentine’s card he’d helped to make for me waiting in his spot. ‘Did you make that for Mummy?’ ‘Yeah!’ ‘Thank you, it’s so pretty!’ ‘Pretty for Mummy on the train.’ As it happens I will be on the train to Oslo on Valentine’s day. I think I’ll take it with me.

Yesterday another mother was picking up her boy, hugging him and squeezing his cheeks. ‘Is he not the cutest boy you ever have seen’, she said to me, with uncharacteristic expressiveness. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘apart from my own.’ ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘but have you looked at him closely?’

We had a lovely day – a bun in our favourite cafe, a play in the park and the library with some little friends, before picking up a parcel from my Mum at the postoffice on the way home. Felix loved his miniature kettle and whisk. In the afternoon we went out to order a cake for his birthday party (Michael is away all week, and time is of the essence), and Felix begged me to stop at McDonalds on the way back (you walk past it to get back to the car). As it was his birthday, I thought, why not, so he capped off the day with his very first happy meal. Not exactly what I had planned but he had a wonderful time, and clutched his complementary balloon all the way home.