Diary of a First Child

Grab a cuppa and settle down for a minute. This is a post loaded with pictures. It’s kind of a little bit magical.

82/366 – Mother

I wish there were words to describe motherhood, and the love I feel for my babies. I wish there was a way of bottling the ‘newborn’ feeling. I wish a lot of things, and I’m in awe of this life I’ve been gifted.

83/366 – First Shopping Trip

Squidgeling is 10 days old, and this is her first trip to the grocery store. She slept through the whole thing.

84/366 – The Making Of Harry Potter

If you just heard a little ‘squee’ there, it came from me. I cannot explain to you the excitement I felt when we were invited to a preview of the The Making Of Harry Potter Tour at the Warner Brothers Studio in Watford. Any event that starts with a Starbucks in the foyer is already off to a good start, but this day rocked. My mom and hubby tagged along, if only to point at me and laugh, but in truth, they enjoyed it too.

I think my favourite thing about the tour is that we were allowed to take as many pictures as we liked, and we were allowed to walk through at our own pace – no guided tours or making you go faster or anything.

Here’s a series of the sets used in the making of the films. There’s the Knight Bus, Diagon Alley, The Burrows, the boys dorm room, the Leaky Cauldron,  more Diagon Alley, the cupboard under the stairs, the Great Hall, Potions classroom, Prevet Drive, Hagrid’s Hut, The drinks fountain from the ball in Goblet of Fire, Umbridge’s Office, the bridge that features heavily in Prisoner of Azkaban, and the Potter’s House in Godrick’s Hollow.

There’s an amazing souvenir shop at the exit, with an unbelievable array of merchandising (at exorbitant prices, mostly!) Here we have wands, chocolate frogs, glasses with the school emblem on, a fabulous display of ridiculously expensive ‘Honeydukes’ sweets, including Berty Botts Every Flavour Beans, which I am lead to believe have some obscure flavours, but I wasn’t going to pay upwards of £10 for some jelly beans! (can’t remember their exact price now), Gallions, Fizzing Whizzbeez and Dumbledore’s favourites: Sherbet Lemons.

And, just to prove we were all there, there’s Ameli having a ride on Hagrid’s motorbike, me at the model Hogwarts, (which was breathtaking!), Martin babywearing (is there anything sexier in a daddy?) Squidge, just like Hagrid did Harry (without the sling, I think!) and Ameli in the side car… be still my heart. Oh, and Butterbeer. Diabetes in a cup. But yum.

85/366 – Gardening, baking, home making

A beautiful sunshiny day. Squidgy and I cleared all the debris out the garden, (thanks to my mother and Ameli for their help!), before Ameli and I made some bird feed shapes for the garden and some butterfly cheese biscuits for us.

86/366 – With A Little Help From Nana

I’m so grateful that my mother has been able to set aside six weeks of her life to share time with us. It’s been so wonderful being able to ‘hand over’ Ameli to her, knowing that my little girl is in safe hands, and is loving having someone to lather her in attention

87/366 – Newborn Photoshoot

My friend Yuri from Urbanvox.net came over to do a newborn photoshoot for us. It was so lovely having someone come into my home and work in our environment to do this, and I can’t wait to see the photos. I took these just for a taster.

88/366 – Peekaboo: Where Are You?

My mom took Ameli to forest nursery, and I went to Starbucks. What a treat. I’ll miss these moments of ‘me’ time when she goes home! My beautiful girlie, here, playing Peekaboo.

Thanks for joining us for our week in pictures!