Our third born daughter turns three – what will she have in store for us?!

Today is the eve of our third daughters, third, Birthday! She’s been an absolute blessing from the moment she corkscrewed out into the world, au natural, to be caught in my hands. I got lucky third time round, with the birth of my dreams, and the beautiful experience has definitely made for a very contented little girl, with such a lovely nature and character.

Today we spent enjoying the sunshine, drawing in the sand at the beach, playing in the garden and baking cakes.

Alice had accompanied me in the car, at 8am, to drive Charlotte to school on the other side of town – whilst the man of the house was busy on an early webinar – which he did from the home office. We were back from the school run in time to meet him for a quick coffee, before he headed into the office to carry on with his day. It was lovely to share a little pre-Birthday moment with Alice, Grandma & Granddad.

Alice is such a joy.

She loves music and has an amazing memory of new song lyrics – and sings back in tune too! She was the only one of my babies to hear me play a real piano daily whilst in utero (I always loved to play – but couldn’t afford a piano – so made do with an electric keyboard for years… until my dear Grandmother left me some money in will to invest in a real piano).

She was the only one of my babies that Grandma and Granddad ‘met’ whilst she was in utero – perhaps explaining her strong bond with them.

She also loves to draw, paint and bake – keeping her Mama (as the stay-at-home carer) very busy indeed (often chasing my tail in an attempt to contain and clean up the aftermath of creativity!).

She’s absolutely scrumptious, a chatterbox and a character full of stories, songs and surprising conversations. We are so, so delighted to have her in our lives. After two children we kept thinking of having one more, but with Dan setting up a business we weren’t sure… and then, I’ll never forget, he came home from a good first year of business and said, ‘Right love, I’m ready to try for number three,’ and… hey presto – first time lucky – I got pregnant! Her happy soul must have been floating around just waiting for the moment to jump on in and join our family!

Of course – with a little gap (of four years) between our second born daughter and third born daughter, everyone asked the, ‘Was it planned?’ question… and then (because we had two daughters), ‘Are you hoping for a boy this time?’. I got tired of answering these questions – and receiving disbelieving responses from some people. We didn’t even find out the sex of our dear Alice (the same with Charlotte & Sophie). I loved the surprise of finding out after all the hard work of delivering a baby!

So, here we are, three years on and so thrilled to be celebrating her third Birthday. What’s more, my wonderful parents are visiting – all the way from the UK – to share in the fun!