Three plus two equals FIVE!

Bram and Mum
Originally uploaded by billyjoebob.

Your mother, Brambling, turned five today. With the reaching of that milestone, it's interesting for me to look back and see what was happening last year.

Before your arrival, punkin, on your mother's birthday, it appears that I took her to dinner at a LUDICROUSLY expensive restaurant.
This is all very well and good, punkin, but it's hardly the way that we choose to celebrate things now that we are enbabied. The way that we will celebrate tonight will involve, as discussed previously, pizza, sparkling wine, Rockstar and CAKE. The cake part is very important. As you grow older, you'll come to appreciate just exactly how fantastic is cake in all its forms, the particular form of which your mother is inordinately fond is baked cheescake. The reasons for this will become obvious, once you get an opportunity to taste some cake.

Enough about cake, let's talk about your mother.

You know that I love her, sure, but I don't know that you understand just how fully your mum and I have become parts of each other's lives. When we first moved in together (a story that can wait until you're a bit older), we each had our own social circles, outings, hobbies etc. As the months and years passed, we became more and more involved in each other, more and more we just wanted to spend time with each other. They sometimes say that when two people are intrinsically involved with each other they can each finish the other's sentences. Your mum and I, punkin, have invented our own language.

Every second I spend at work, I think of her. For her to undertake this great ordeal, of having you and bringing you up and creating you with me, this speaks volumes. You, punkin, are the living, breathing, smiling, laughing, giggling, gurgling embodiment of that love, and when I look at you I see your mum reflected in your eyes.

Having said all that, punkin, I have some fatherly advice for you. As you grow up, you're going to have lots of friends. As they grow up with you, they will enter certain professions. Keep track of these, and use this knowledge to make sure that you benefit from their skills and creativity. One can do considerably worse, punkin, than to have a friend who is a lawyer, or a doctor, or a plumber or an electrician.

Or a jeweller.

As you grow up, punkin, you will also learn that women like jewellery. Women particularly like jewellery that is custom made. By someone clever. With access to photographs of all of that person's other jewellery.

Love you.