I've not written about so many of your 'firsts'.  First day at daycare, first night staying at Nanna and Grandad's, first sentences.  And while they feel so crucial, so incredible at the time, I know the details will slip from our memories.  But that is life.  It is wonderful and fleeting and transient and joyful.  But my boy Arlo, know that every first was shared and celebrated, and every day of the last two years have been the best years of my life.  Alongside some of the hardest days of my life.  But they feel distant now.  You are no longer sore and sad and sleepless.  You are quite simply our sunshine boy.  Happy-go-lucky, kind, sensitive, lovely and so, so, so wonderful.  Truly, when I sit down to write about you, my heart leaps to my throat.  I just can't do you justice my Arlo boy, you are exactly what this family needed and we are so lucky you are ours.

You are about to turn two on Wednesday.  Nonna and Poppa are coming to spend the day with you,  Kellie is coming from Wellington in the weekend and we'll have birthday dinners and cake all week.  You'll have cake at daycare the day before, sharing it with your new friends in Juniors...it will be your first day there!  You already love it from your transitional visits, just like Louie you like activity and people and challenges....you've outgrown the Infants room and are more than ready to take on Juniors.  The teachers there already love you, they've told me you are very kind and caring and interested in everything.  The Infants teachers have also said they will be so sad to see you go, they adore you too.  Everyone does.

At home you love to follow Louie around, copying every move.  But you're also finding your own independence and sticking up for yourself more.  You dance and wiggle and jump and play fight with Dad and Louie, saying "I show you, I show you!  Mum, I show you" the whole time.  "What?  What?" is also a constant peep from you.  You don't like to miss out on ANY new information or developments.  You can really talk now, you can tell me pretty much anything.  I love it when this happens as I feel I can really help you when you are frustrated or sad about something, because you can tell me exactly what.  You ask for cuddles a lot which I also love.

I'm missing you and Louie and your Dad right now, you are off in Taupo staying at Nonna and Poppa's, I have to work.  You are going up to see the snow for the first time!  I have told Dad to take a video of your faces when you touch it but I can already see your lovely big eyes full of wonder in my mind.  You are so beautiful Arlo.  I love you so.

Mum xxx

Update!  Apparently Arlo took one touch of the blizzard-y snow and said 'NO!', climbed back in the car and ate snacks while Andy and Louie had snow fights and built snow men.  Good on you baby boy :)

Two or three times a year I get this way, a deep yearning feeling and a need to tap into that which resonates.  I often look to books, to specific authors - Hunter S Thompson, Herman Hesse, PJ  O'Rourke - but more often than not I reach for Tom Robbins.  I gather about me the books I have of his (I should really try and get them all), like good friends comforting me.  Even stacked up beside the bed I feel more at peace, that nearby are Amanda, Bernard Mickey Wrangle, Larry Diamond and all those other characters who tug at the absurd brilliance of living.

But, here, I must admit, the last time I picked up Another Roadside Attraction, a book I must read annually, it felt different.  As I gulped in the pages that usually bind me to a much needed world of sensual spiritualism, profound and preposterous, it felt....off.  I wasn't as transfixed, I wasn't thrown immediately into that state of grace it usually transports me to.  Fuck me if it didn't actually feel a bit silly.

How awful!  I can't outgrow Tom Robbins!  When one's lifetime heroes begin to fall, by death (RIP David Bowie, Hunter S Thompson) or by ones own maturity/de-sensitivity, who or what replaces them?

At 39 and a half, tonight , I still collect my friendly books about me.  I nearly dare not read them but I will.  And I'll hope that they still spark.  That growing old mustn't mean losing everything that once galvanised and gratified.

But...if it does, if I must leave the light of those who brightened my past days, then let me search out new torches in the dark.

I wish to give up social media, with its  promise that it keeps us 'connected' and turn again to wordsmiths, philosophers and poets who can connect us to something greater than ourselves and our little (wonderful) lives.  

I love the new year and all the commitments of change and resolve and betterment!  So far I've exercised, dieted, meal planned, quit social media (twice) and parented better than the whole of last  year.

Long live 2016!  May it be well lit.