Dear diary:

We’re preparing for Seren’s first birthday this week. It’s this Friday the 13th! I can’t physically believe that it was nearly one year ago that I gave birth. How exactly did this happen. I honestly still think he’s 6 weeks old. Or 6 months. I still remember so vividly being in the hospital with him. I feel like it was yesterday. But it was not. This exact day last year I started getting labour pains and I went to the hospital at 6.30pm. Seren was born at 7.36am the next morning. Simultaneously this feels like only yesterday but I was also an entirely different person then that I hardly recognise her. This was the photo I took of myself the day I went into labour. I look at it and my immediate thoughts are self depreciating (I look so swollen, my acne is awful) but I remember taking it and knowing it was going to be the last photo I took before my whole world changed. It felt momentous. It was I guess. For me anyway.

Serendipitously, Seren also started crawling this week! So that’s one thing off my list of worries from last week, haha. It’s wild how quickly it happened. I mean there was a loooong lead up. But in two days he’d mastered it once he actually started trying to do it. So he’s somewhat mobile now. The main thing he likes to crawl to get is his TV remote (We got him the same one that we have for our TV but took the batteries out) it’s his favourite toy despite the millions of other purpose built toys he possesses.

This week has been filled with preparation for Seren’s birthday and working. We will be having a small party next weekend, but celebrating his actual birthday tomorrow. This week I made party hats for all his toys to wear. I’ve made little banana bread muffins for his ‘birthday cake’ (No, I’m not letting him have proper cake yet..) I’ve gotten three helium balloons which I’m hoping stay inflated for just one more day, and I’ve put up streamers. Oh and I’ve wrapped all his gifts! So when he comes out into the family room in the morning I’ll have all his toys sitting up with party hats and the balloons and streamers and gifts. I can’t take credit for the party hat on toys idea - I’ve seen it a bunch of times on TikTok. But I was like there is no way I’m giving Temu business and buying mini party hats on there when I can very easily make them myself. So I just did some colourful drawing and then make some templates and cut out the party hat shapes, stuck them together and hot glued pom poms to the top. Voila!

In regards to Seren’s party, I had all these grand plans of having this huge party but honestly I was like I don’t have the capacity for that right now. I wanted to do the My First Rodeo theme and have it all Country and Western/Cowboy stuff. The ‘old me’ would have handmade decorations and gone to the nines and invited a bunch of people. The new me..? Just family and no pressure thanks. And a couple of DIY decoration projects if I have the energy/time… I just want to hang with close family, and Seren doesn’t really have any baby friends yet. Also he can’t talk so for the time being he has to be happy with what we choose to do to celebrate haha.

I’ll probably have more reflections next week. In the meantime Simon’s gone to buy a bottle of champagne for us to have tomorrow night, we’ll just have dinner at home but definitely fit in a toast to ourselves for being parents for a whole year.

Wishlist:

I found this wild top on Depop by my favourite 90s/y2k Fiorucci. Will I buy it? No. Often this space is just for appreciation.

Watching/Listening:

Okay this is going to be the longest ever explainer for something I’ve been watching/listening to but here goes. It’s also kind of embarrassing but if I’m going to admit it anywhere it’s going to be here. About 6 or 7 years ago I stumbled across this YouTuber named Julia Zelg. She’s a queer creator who got a lot of notoriety and subscribers from her age gap relationships that she would share with her viewers online. She started dating this woman called Eileen De Freest who was significantly older than her, I think Julia was about 23 and Eileen was early 60s. They get married and essentially their entire relationship was public and put online on Julia’s YouTube channel. Cut to Eileen gets arrested and jailed when they take a trip to America together and Julia begins to find out a lot of stuff about Eileen that she didn’t know about her past. (All this is on YouTube by the way) (Well, actually I think some of the videos have been deleted unfortunately but it WAS online for a long time) Since then it’s been like the most unbelievable drama you can imagine like beyond reality TV beyond anything you can comprehend and I don’t know how there isn’t a Netflix documentary about them for real it would be so good and they should get me on to write it because I pretty much have a degree in Julia’s life and motivations.

ANYWAY. This account on YouTube called Kidology recently did a massive deep dive into the whole thing and it was really satisfying for me to see many other people equally as enthralled in Julia’s world. It’s a bit trashy but it did put everything into a timeline. I just love dissecting the motivations of influencers - the public and the private (or lack thereof). It’s fascinating to me and Julia is the most diabolical and engrossing online persona I’ve come across. And I have NO ONE to talk to it about!!! So you have to listen. Sorry.

Inside a book/magazine from my collection:

Second half of last week’s Dolly Mag including Dolly Doctor! Lots of highlights but I particularly enjoyed the Foxy shoe ads and the Tee Shirt spread.