Sofia
It was Saturday morning and I'd stripped the sheets from your bed. You walk into your room and I hear you say 'Oh no, what's happened? Whachya gunna do?" as the bed lies naked, waiting for the clean sheets and restored order.
You stay in your bedroom for a while. I know you are in there, busy playing with something. Maybe you are stripping the sheets and mini quilt Nana made for you from the doll's cot Grandad lovingly restored for your Christmas gift. Maybe it's your books, the dress up clothes, your box of trinkets and treasures or a puzzle.
Sometime later I return to your room, ready to make your bed, fresh floral sheets in my arms.
You have since moved out into the garden, and I can hear you jumping up and down on the trampoline singing 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star' and 'The Alphabet Song' loudly and proudly to yourself. It still surprises me that you've mastered these songs. I must have sung these songs to you hundreds of time. I sang both of them as lullabies when you were a newborn, finding they were the two songs that I could most easily recall and recite through the fog of new motherhood, breastfeeding and sleep deprivation.
I sometimes miss those early moments of nurturing you as a newborn. I remember feeling strangely and unexpectedly confident as a first time mummy, savouring the snapshots in time as you were nourished at my breast, lay sleeping on my chest or looked about with expectant eyes as I enjoyed the age old art of baby wearing. I remember wrapping you and placing you in your bassinette, marvelling at how wonderfully compact you were.
As the summer of your birth turned into winter I would tuck a blanket around you, thinking that soon you would need to transfer into a cot.
So as I returned to your room my head filled with flashes of your first few months as a baby as I discovered four of your favourite teddy bears neatly lined up and tucked up asleep on your bed. In the absence of proper sheets you had used the Teddy blanket Nana had made underneath them and another Nana quilt to keep them warm.
Each bear has a story of its own.The pink bear on the left was my Teddy Bear as a child, now slightly battle weary and scarred. The little red check bear was a gift from a work colleague. Bear No. 3 is from Italy, but you have long since stripped him of his Italian sporting jersey. The big blue bear on the right was a gift from my best female friend in Thailand, Tasanee. It was April 2011 when he joined our family, crammed uncomfortably into the last available space in the suitcase.
Before I could make your bed Daddy loudly called out for me to come and help with something. In the meantime you had returned to your bedroom, checked up on your sleeping posse of bears and trotted down the hallway to confront us both with a finger raised to your lips and a stern "Ssshhh, bears are sleeping, be quiet please".
Not too different to what I used to say in those early days of baby Sofia in the bassinette.
