At 11.27pm this evening, it will be exactly one year since Toby – or to give him his full name, Tobias Alexander Liew Wai Seng – was born. One year since he arrived, at home (as planned), on our living room floor (not quite according to plan), delivered by me (definitely not part of the plan).
One year. Not a lot of time to us. Quite literally a lifetime for him.
And what a year it has been. A change of government. The Haitian earthquake. Floods in Australia. Volcanic ash from Eyjafjallajökull. Snow, snow and more snow bringing the UK to a halt. The Chilean miners. The Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Raoul Moat. Wikileaks. The iPad. Scientists trapping antimatter. England retaining the Ashes. England flopping at the football World Cup. The end of Big Brother.
On a much smaller scale, it has been quite a year for Toby too, a year full of firsts – first tooth, first crawl, first word, the usual sort of stuff – capped now by his first birthday.
I wouldn’t know where to begin, really. But, as the old saying goes, a picture paints a thousand words. So rather than try to encapsulate the events of Toby’s first year and the feelings and memories it has instilled in us, here is a sample of 25 photos which chart our little boy’s first of hopefully many long years on this mortal coil.
Happy birthday, Toby.