Happy Birthday Kaede

Happy Birthday Kaede, six today, who’d of thunk we’d make it this far? Only yesterday I took you out of the disapproving nurses arms and put you in an Arsenal baby grow. Your face was so battered from all the trauma of getting you out, that you looked like a footy hooligan already. You started life unconventionally and have stubbornly stayed that way ever since.


I know we didn’t help by landing you with an unusual moniker, but count yourself lucky it was Kaede and not Yukihana, which I also pitched, as it was snowing when you were born and it means ‘snow fairy’. Good sense and maternal pressure won through though, and Kaede it stayed.

You have been a lifelong believer in running before you can walk, which once resulted in you falling over and chipping your front tooth, the one we had so lovingly grown for so long. That same tooth fell out of its own accord last month, so maybe Mummy will let you start smiling in photos again.

You invented the ‘wiggle-bum’ dance and often entertain us with it, although it sometimes stops passersby in their tracks. After all, who expects to see a full moon during the day? Your Irish dancing is also a sight to behold, more akin to a baby giraffe learning to walk than anything Irish though. Your version of the Nutcracker Suite is an eye watering affair, especially when you jump onto my lap.

Your first word was Pub, something that brings equal shame and pride to the family, but then your Mum and I rarely agree on anything anyway. I considered it a statement of intent on your part, whereas she thinks it was the answer to “Where’s your Dad?”

I see a culinary future for you. Determined to make a cheese-free pizza for your dairy-averting Father, you invented the Spaghetti Bolognaise Pizza. A plain base, covered in bolognaise sauce and topped with cooked pasta and basil leaves. Hard to hold, but tasty to eat, it deserved the honourable mention it received in the Pizza Express competition.

But whatever you decide to do in the future just remember the following:

1. All boys are horrible and really do smell as bad as they look.

2. The eyes in the back of my head still work with long (or grey) hair

3. Try to make your Mum laugh more than you make her cry

4. Happy tears are OK though

5. Football isn’t just for boys, that goes for video games too

6. Continue to compare me to Homer Simpson, I won’t let you down that way

Happy Birthday Darling.