My youngest nephew turned One today! He was born a whole year ago – wow, it sped by! I remember when he couldn’t even sit up and when we could leave him in a room alone (for a couple of seconds) without him crawling or walking after us. Wow – a whole year. MashaAllah.

He received a vast amount of presents too. It was difficult choosing for him though since he basically has everything as we gave it all to his older brother the year before. Luckily even with the limited choices, no one actually bought him the same thing – it was close though – I changed my mind at the last minute.

Soon we’ll be taking them to school – then they’ll grow up and become teenagers and my siblings and I will be in our 40’s probably with kids of our own (scary thought – the age thing, well the kid thing too.. ok both of them.)

We recorded little messages for my nephew to look at when he’s 18 – ‘Happy Birthday, I’m your .. and blah blah, I LOVEEE YOUUU!’. Cute. Hey hold on, I was the one recording! I didn’t get to do my message! Heyyy – that’s dumb – and it always seems to happen – sigh!

It’s nice when family get together too, like everyone’s around now for my nephew’s birthday, just like they were around on Eid, downstairs – the noise is crazyyy! But it’s so cool, everyone talking over each other, everyone with something or another to say, everyone laughing (and yawning from the long day but too excited to go home), everyone bringing out old stories from the dusty closet – rattling skeletons and stuff – luckily not all of them are embarrassing! Different languages (the older ones in one or two and the younger ones in English). There’s no restrictions when family get together, no awkwardness (if the family coming around aren’t awkward of course). The funny thing is my Birthday Nephew has had his milk and gone to sleep – the birthday party isn’t the reason everyone’s here now – it’s for the family company and it’s nice (I know I’m using that word over and over – I need to read the dictionary again, find new words and stuff)

If I listen carefully enough (I don’t really need to I can hear them clear enough) I hear that my cousin has the spotlight now, she’s got everyone listening to her, can’t hear exactly what she’s saying though because of the noise of this typing but I hear laughter and someone – my uncle or sister or someone replying to her and everyone joining in. weird how conversation works. A person can just talk and talk and basically never stop. We can talk about anything seriously – the fabric of something, a memory, shampoo, babies, work, school, the garden, the sky.. the current topic is tea, and how loads of people say they want half a cup of tea. Now it’s nursery rhymes. You see how conversation flows? See the verbal love?

And it all was possible because my beautiful, lovely, darling nephew grew up and turned one today.