Dear Poppy,

Its been a year and a half since I wrote. Wish I had kept it up. Today, I just had to as things are about to change. Our lives are about to change forever and part of me so wants to freeze things as they are for eternity..

Significant milestone of the last year if I can do any justice in capturing them :

1. We moved from London to Bristol in September 2013 due to dad taking up a position here. Major life event for you and me in particular. I didn't want to leave London. I worried about depriving you of an experience/life that I would have liked you to have. Anyway, we took the plunge.

2.You missed London and talked about your red house and your play ground every single day for weeks. You would not want to come back home. You wanted the London House.

3. You started nursery at the age of 3. You took to it instantly like a fish takes to water. You just loved it from the word go. We went from 3 mornings a week to 5 within2 weeks of starting..

4. You love playgrounds. You could spend all day (and you often do) in a playground if you had the choice to. You love singing on the swings and climbing. You are very good with the zip wire and fantastic at trampolining


5. You adore arts and crafts. You like painting, cutting,sticking, drawing, decorating. Wrapping presents is a big favourite. At Christmas, after opening a couple of presents, you announced that now you would like to wrap some (this after spending days wrapping presents in the follow up to Christmas). You particularly like using ribbons and rubber bands..

6. When indoors the number 1 favourite activity is playing with animals (anmals). You have a basket full. You like arranging them based on their eco systems. Farm animals, desert animals, scary animals are kept separate from the non scary ones, sea creatures, forest animals, animals that lived along time ago..You like arranging them along a river where they can drink water.

7. For christmas, you wanted a real giraffe. When we persuaded you that it wasnt a great idea, you wanted to go to Africa to see giraffes. You finally settled for a soft toy giraffe family. You made your request known to Santa. Father Christmas carried a 4 feet tall giraffe all the way from the north pole for you.

Your room is quite giraffed up. We have a family of 3 giraffes. A number of scheich giraffe toys. A giraffe table and chairs. Every time I ask you what you dream of at night, you say giraffe. When I ask you what your favourite something is,  its always giraffe. Arna, whats your favourite colour - Red and giraffe. Whats your favourite playground - The circle playground and giraffe!

8. You have become incredibly sensible and reasonable. Hardly any tantrums. We go days without any crying. You fall asleep in 5 minutes with one of your 2 favourite songs.

9. When you have managed to do some desired things (like playing on your own), you get a pasta in our bowl (boy as you say it). When the bowl is full, you get a treat. So far you have chosen to get Schleich toys - blue whale, killer whale, giraffe bending and drinking water. Soon you discovered the fantasy toys next to the animal section in the shop. You chose a fire breathing dragon, a 3 headed dog and most recently a ghost. You have a huge fascination for scary things and monsters.

10. You love dinosaurs. I was a bit worried about all the dinosaur programmes you watched with your papa. You know the names of at least 6-7 dinosaur species and can recognise them.

11. From the age of 1.5 years to about 3 years you were CRAZY about circles. We always had to draw you red circles. On a page, we had to draw a big red circle that took up most of the page. No one was allowed to draw inside the circle. So everything else had to go around the circle. This went on for 1.5 years! We have books upon books of every single page covered with a red circle and diamonds, hearts, squares all around the edges.

12. We have been to Paris twice and for some reason, it has made a huge impression. You love Paris. You talk about it all the time. You tell your nursery friends that Pip is going to be born in Paris. That you are going to take a train and go to Paris after nursery. You talk about it as being your favourite holiday. You think every tall tower is the Eiffel Tower. 

Poppy, the big change happening in our lives is that in 2 days you are about to become a big sister. This idea is not been something that you have warmed to easily. Its only in the last month that you are open to the concept. You were not happy with Pip having her own room. You thought she should sleep in the front yard. You then thought the bathroom would be a good place for her. You considered the option of putting her on the top floor all by herself. You have said innumerable times that Pip should not come out of my tummy and stay in there.

More recently, you have been trying to impress Pip with all the wonderful things you can do like jumping very high, dancing, spinning, balancing on one leg. You like doing a little performance in front of her and then bow and wonder what Pip thought of your antics.