Letter to Conor on his 1st Birthday …

 

 

Dear Conor,

Happy 1st Birthday to you,

We hope you like the star cake and star balloon. We made the cake in your Grandma’s kitchen using her hand held mixer. The mixer is older than your Mummy. Grandma used to make your Mummy cakes with that mixer when she was a little girl. Your Mummy loved icing them best and didn’t like it when your Grandma added currants. Your little cousins helped blow out your candle.

There is so much we’d like to tell you Conor. Firstly we want to tell you how much you are loved. We cherished every kick and moment spent with you growing with us. We grew with you too over those 41 weeks. We love you still and it breaks our heart that we are spending your first birthday away from you. We miss you terribly. We hope Grandad John is keeping you and your friends (all the babies we’ve come to know through ALLF, Feileacain & Pilltown) entertained.

At your service we promised to “Strive to live in love for in that love I live”. We want to tell you that our love for each other is so much stronger since the day we met you. We have also been surrounded by so much love from our families and friends. Through you we have made some very special new friends too.

We want to say Thank You Conor for making us parents. Since we made the commitment to spend our lives together this is the role we wanted. We wish more than anything the outcome had been different but we do not regret those 41 weeks we spent together. Either one of us would have given our lives if it could have saved you. My only regret is that I didn’t insist the Doctor keep me in to deliver you on the day we heard the words “everything is perfect, you’ve nothing to worry about”. We all know you’d be here with us sticking your finger in the cake if we did. We try Conor but I don’t know if we’ll ever make peace with this. We hope that one day a clever engineer will invent a time machine so we can change the events of last summer. Maybe its something you and Grandad John could work on for us.

Be assured Conor that we will never forget you. We tell everyone all about you. There are people all over the world who now know your name from reading your story. There are people who think of you when they see stars or bake cakes. We celebrate every text, email and conversation where your name is used, especially those messages that arrive on just an ordinary day. You are and always will be our first born son, a grandson, nephew and cousin.

Happy birthday with lots of love from your Mummy and Daddy xxx
*Top tip.

If you find yourself needing to bake a quick cake away from home and away from all your usual kitchen gadgets I recommend Mary Berry’s Victoria Sandwich. It’s a very easy “all in one” bake;

http://www.maryberry.co.uk/recipes/great-british-bake-off-recipes/victoria-sandwich

I decorated the cake using butter icing and Smarties. The butter icing was made by mixing 200g butter (always real butter in our kitchen) with 400g sifted icing sugar and a splash of vanilla extract. I covered the cake with an initial thin layer, chilled the cake in the fridge for 30 mins and then put on the top layer of icing. This means the top layer is clear of cake crumbs.