My baby is one year old today. It’s been a mad, jam-packed year of broken nights and novel deadlines, of manuscript papers and dirty nappies and really, really hard work squeezed into impossibly tiny spaces.

It’s also been a year of great joy, of watching this new child grow into herself, of watching Raeli grow into being a big sister.

Jem, otherwise known as Jemimacakes, Babycakes, Jem-Jem, Mima, My Mima, Jemmels, La La and Bunny Girl, is one hell of a person. She is full of energy, a crawler and an intriguer where Raeli was a much gentler soul. Jem never met a power cable she didn’t want to chew, and my that gets old pretty fast. Her favourite trick is yanking out the ear buds of my iPod. Her colour is orange, which is something I never expected. (I kind of hope she does go through a pink stage when she’s 3 otherwise there’s a crate of handmedown clothes waiting for her that will make her very unhappy)

She is crawling, pulling herself up on furniture, and for a few floaty and exciting moments yesterday, was standing on her own.

She’s a Gooner girl through and through, and while she didn’t get much choice in being an Arsenal fan, she most certainly considers her fluffy soccer ball to be one of her favourite toys. She recently discovered the deep love of hitting an empty biscuit tin with a pair of chopsticks, and took to drumming with alarming vigour.

She can say Mama and Dadoo and Ra-ra or Rae. She can clap, just, and wave, almost.

When watching Xena with me, her hands move as if she’s trying to figure out the sword moves. That could be a problem later.

It’s important, as deadlines crunch together and I fight for every spare moment to work in, that I stop and relish the time I get to spend with this tiny precious person, who won’t be a baby much longer.

We had a little party for her on the weekend, with friends and family. I didn’t bake anything overly exciting, just sugar cookies that turned into butter cookies because the sugar melted (damn you, Jane Brocket, you said CASTER sugar) instead of going crunchy on top, and an Osky-friendly (gluten and dairy free) lemon slice from a packet and an orange poppyseed cake for the actual centre piece (also from a packet, made with big sister’s help). But a last minute idea from L led to a fairly impressive jelly experiment. The one pictured is the only perfect jelly insect that emerged from the moulds. More experiments to be done in this! Silicon moulds really do rock.

The weather was beautiful, and the kids rampaged in the back garden. It felt like spring, at the very least, and not the deepest coldest part of winter, which is what August usually provides for us. I took Jem out briefly, and it only just occurred to me that, you know, the girl needs shoes. She doesn’t have ANY. Her feet got well and truly grubby in her brief encounter with the cubby house.

I have a lot of pictures of Raeli grabbing hold of Jem, trying to keep her still long enough to let me take their picture together. That says a lot about both of their personalities, really…

She got many presents, of course, mostly things with wheels on, which was something we were seriously lacking in this house. She is very appreciative of all her new shinies. One fast favourite was ‘Jemima to the Rescue’ which features the toys from Play School in a SPACE STATION made out of cardboard boxes. Jemima the doll at one point goes for a space walk to rescue their honey supplies. There are comets made out of aluminium foil. It is completely made of awesome, and Jem has already given it her seal of approval by chewing the corner off it. It does make me muse about trying to get hold of old Mr Squiggle books… damn it, why have they not rebooted Mr Squiggle?

On Sunday, Raeli was a fairy for a friend’s birthday party, at The. Fairy. Shop. If you have never seen inside a Fairy Shop, then you have not lived. You’ll be picking glitter out of your pockets for weeks. Anyway, Raeli dressed as a very mod rainbow fairy, all red and aqua and yellow and the barest modicum of pink. I am adoring Raeli this year. First she started wearing trousers after a year of refusing to wear anything but skirts and dresses (round about the time I started wearing trousers, big shock). Then she started slowly divesting herself of her pink phase. She now proudly proclaims that her favourite colour is anything but pink – yellow, purple, aqua, white, pretty much all of them. I do love her so. Anyway, I got to escort her to her fairy party while Jem had Daddy time. Escort in this instance means ‘dropped her off, went for a walk, had Vietnamese for lunch, read book in nice warm car.’ I love having an older child! This is the first time I have completely left her at a party. Afterwards, we went shopping for Jem’s birthday present and had a little bit of Mummy daughter time.

Today, Jem’s actual birthday, we got to hang out together while the others were off at work and school. We went shopping for presents, rampaged with a newspaper in the living room, watched Xena, and read books together. I found her picking bits out of my Victorian crazy quilt and promptly gave her the present I had been working on for her over the last year – a quilt with much, much orange in it! Because she had been sleeping when the other two left the house in the morning, she didn’t get to open her other presents until tea time. Yes, our girl is now the proud owner of a xylophone and two baby-sized maracas! She does love her percussion.

Tags: birthdays, family, jem, pics, picture books, presents, raeli