Dear Chloe

Let me just start by saying how much I love you, how quiet and different life would be without you...I would be devastated if you were not here.

One day, I hope that you have your own children.  Not so that I can have grand children.  I am far to young to be wanting grand children, yet!  I would like for you to have your own child/ren, so that you can have a taste of your own medicine.  I am fairly certain that my mother felt the same about me.

Here is why I hope for grand children...so that every day you can:

• be whacked in the eye
• cracked on the head with a very heavy little head - at least once a day
• be awake by 6am...at the latest....EVERY day
• ...and be at the mercy of a fully wound child from the moment that her eyes open
• be elbowed in the boob, regularly
• mop water and milk off the floor every 5 minutes
• be screamed/head butted/pushed and pulled at while food is prepared - you have a bit of a see-food-want-food-now issue
• follow your child around - retrieving her from:
• window sills
• tables - including my sewing table!
• standing on and tipping little chairs over
• and stopping her from climbing into the bath full of water
• mop up the flood when the dog water bowl is tipped over
• rescue brushes, paper, clothing, hair clips... from the toilet
• change the poopy nappy of a baby that does not want to lie down
• clean the floor of food every single time your child eats
• ....especially the cheerios and milk that are dumped on the floor when you have had enough
• so that you can see what you are able to squeeze into that precious nap hour
• polish those dents in the floor, from whatever is is that you have just thrown, so that Daddy doesn't see them and get cross
• so that you can have a never-ending stream of teeny tiny clothes to wash and hang
• stop your child from acting like superman off of the couch and bean bag
• clean off food and drink that has been smeared into the couch
• have your furniture used as a jungle gym
• ...and have your protests and threats completely ignored

You are only just 16mths old, but - oh man! - you are the noisiest, most busy and active, destructive, messy and trouble causing little monster that I have ever experienced.  I thought that girls were supposed to be easy?

But then also, so that you have a little person to:

• sew cute clothes for
• hug and cuddle
• give you wet little kisses
• give pigtails to - that first pigtail is the cutest