Baby Emil was growing fast, and he was just the happiest wee thing ever. he just breezed through the teething horrors, never loosing one night's sleep so far, and sometimes I thought that God knew what kind of a kid to give us, as he slept through from about his sixth week. I was no spring chicken anymore, and if he was a bad sleeper I would have had a hard time coping. During the day now he had his nanny Berty, and he now slept at his own house, as we did not want him to feel that he belonged with me, and not with his family.
But sometimes it was hard to not cry when I watched him being so happy, and knowing that he was missing out on a mother's love. So very sad!
He still slept with me three nights a week when Jan and Andreas had karate practice, and it was to him the biggest joy to just chuck everything out of my chest of drawers, and sometimes he would sit in the cot with a pair of stockings or some other underwear around his neck, playing with whatever he could get hold of.
He was now nearing his first birthday, and had started to walk, and poor old Berty had her hands full running after him. He is a strange little thing, never playing with any of his toys, and when he and Berty went for a walk, he would pick up stones and sticks, which he then brought home, and beware the person who wanted to take it away from him! The cutest for me was when he came struggling over the rough piece between our houses on his wee wobbly legs, then gave me a huge smile before making for the cooky tin, saying 'mum, mum', that meaning food in Danish. Strange that nobody now spoke Danish since Nina died, but this baby called food 'mum' since he started talking. he would then clamber on the chair next to my work table, and stand there having his cooky!
 I had decided to take out all the grass on my home garden ground, as maybe that way I could get rid of the mole crickets. Not an easy task, as I have been neglecting my garden a lot since the tragedy, as looking after baby Emil that first seven or eight months took up a lot of my time. My lawns both back and front were now quite dead, and I could roll it up like a carpet, the larvae of the cricket moles having feasted so well on the roots that the grass died. Since I had lost my beautiful vine and two other shrubs because of the moles, I have declared a new war on them, but whether I would walk out as the winner was another story.
In the meantime Bush, my Zimbabwian neighbour, had decided that he would taxi people to Uniondale on Saturday mornings, and it was delightful to watch him washing and polishing this by now quite battered old car before picking up his passengers!
. I don't even think that he had a driver's license yet, and to see him pull away with grass and dirt flying in all directions, made me quite anxious about his passengers. His car was looking good when he first bought it, but after he landed in a few ditches and had a few bumps, it did not look so good anymore.