Happy First Birthday, Theo!

Yes, a year has rushed by, and our curled-up little bud of a baby has unfurled into a ~~walking, talking~~ cruising, babbling, genuine one-year-old!

The birthday itself was low-key, which I think is only fair when the chief player has no idea what's going on. Graham's parents came to visit, and we are seeing mine soon, so the birthday boy gets to show off his new skills to his grandparents. And eat cake.

Grandad brought a cake, which we ate for lunch, and I made a banana cake. It had to be banana, really, for this one. I'm not sure we yet have photographic evidence of Theo trying to stuff half a banana in his mouth all at once, but that will have to be remedied. He is very good at it.

And since it was his birthday, I feel entitled to sing Theo's praises for a few minutes.

We love his infectious giggle and cheeky smile.

We love the tuft of hair that sticks up between his double crown.

We love the way he can entertain himself with toys for half an hour at a time. (Oh yes!)

We love his careful attention and single-minded determination.

Determination here applied to taking all the coal off the electric fire and - if the state of his face is anything to go by - trying to eat it. Of course, when I got the camera out he started moving too fast to get a non-blurry photo.)

We love his bright blue eyes - and still are amazed that he got them!

We love his funny noises and clapping hands.

We just love him - from top to toe!

Comments

A Place at the Table: Spiritual Formation Book 12

"God has ordained in his great wisdom and goodness that eating, and especially eating in company, should be one of the most profound and pleasurable aspects of being human." Miranda Harris had been intending to write a book for years. She'd got as far as a folder full of notes when she died suddenly in a car accident in 2019. When her daughter, Jo Swinney, found the notes, she decided to bring her mum's dream to fruition. A Place at the Table was the result. I thought this was going to be a nice friendly book about having people over for dinner. In one sense it is, but it's pretty hard-hitting as well. Miranda and her husband Peter co-founded the environmental charity A Rocha, so the book doesn't shy away from considering the environmental aspects of what we eat and how we live. They also travelled widely and encountered hunger at close quarters; the tension between seeing such poverty and believing in a generous God comes out clearly in A Place at the Table.

Flexitarianism

Hey folks! I learnt a new word today! I can now proudly proclaim myself to be a flexitarian . Yes, I wish that meant I'm in training to be a trapeze artist. Or that I'm a leading world expert on the chemical properties of stretchy materials. All it actually means is that I don't eat meat that much. Well, big deal. That lumps me in with a majority of the world's population, many of whom have no choice about the matter. So why the need for a fancy new word? Because, it seems, that we in the prosperous West have come to regard having bacon for breakfast, chicken sandwiches for lunch and a steak for dinner as entirely normal. But also because we in the prosperous West are starting to realise that might not be an entirely good idea. You know about factory farming, of course. The images of chickens crammed into tiny cages and pigs which never see the sunlight, which we push out of our minds when we reach for our plastic-wrapped package of sausages in t

Hosting Thanksgiving

OK, I have to confess. This will be a very boring Thanksgiving story. Everything went right and it was a lovely day. For an interesting story you need a few things going wrong. I heard a couple of interesting stories this year - like the one about mis-measuring bourbon to go in the stuffing. Apparently if you put far too much in, all the alcohol doesn't boil off. Or the one about going to cook dinner at an Asian friend's house, and discovering at the last minute that she doesn't have any baking trays, and it's quite difficult to roast a turkey in a wok. But as I said, we didn't have so much as a lumpy gravy panic. Where's my food??? We're working on it, baby! So what do you want to know? Well, it was my first Thanksgiving dinner cooked on American soil. Back when I was free and single and shared a house with lots of people who liked to eat, I got into the habit of celebrating the American feast for a few years, until the number of peopl

Martha's Marvellous Munchies

Search This Blog