Getting wrapped around a 2 year olds' finger: Meeting my niece for the very first time

Yesterday was one of the best and most important days of my 48 year life so far; I finally met my niece, the newest (and by far the cutest) member of my family. It may seem odd to some that I count this day as so important but to me, and my wife, it meant a great deal for a couple of reasons. Firstly, as some of you may know, we are a childless couple; In the 31 years we have been together it seems our fate has not been to have children of our own and so to have this little baby in our lives now is a very timely and valuable thing to us. Secondly, our niece lives a long (LONG) way from Australia where we live. She's in Finland which is about as far from Australia as a person can get! This means that we won't see her much in our lifetime and so every second is the most precious of moments. Anyway, after 4 weeks in the United Kingdom vacationing we finally made it to Finland to meet my niece and to spend some time with my youngest brother who I have not seen for 12 years and to meet his lovely wife. (I think my niece's cuteness comes from her mum's side for sure!)

Ok, so...My niece. She is quite literally the cutest thing ever to grace this planet. Seriously, I don't just mean in looks but also in, well...Everything. I think my sister-in-law thought she may be a little shy at first however after about 2 seconds we were getting along like long lost mates! One thing I'll have to be careful of though is that she repeats everything, literally everything, people say and I don't want to get the blame for teaching her bad words that may get repeated at day care when she starts there soon. She can count to ten, say the alphabet, and sings a lot too. I've been teaching her a few Aussie words too and she now does a pretty good version of "g'day mate" which is pretty funny. She is as smart as a tack too! She not only repeats what people say and do, she actually applies it in the right context later. She's a smart one. Cute and smart, a deadly combination I think :)

She'll be turning 2 years old next month and unfortunately we'll be home in Australia so we brought her a few items to give her and last night we had a fashion parade. She was hilarious as each thing my wife brought of out of the bag she'd hold up to herself with a grin and hurry over to the mirror to check the look. She'd then come back fold it (sort of neatly) place it down and wait for the next. Lucky we bought a lot of dresses so we could watch the process repeatedly! It was so funny. We also brought her a necklace with her name on it, a small pile of Aussie dollars for her bank account and some silver coins minted with Australian animals on there to get her going on the silver stacking!

I'm a little overwhelmed (in a good way) by her to be honest and am still dealing with it. I'm mindful of having to get the most out of the week that we are here with her, my brother and his wife. We only spent a few hours together last night and then she had to go to bed (as we all did) and to be honest I didn't sleep very well. It's about 5:30am right now and the sun is beaming into the room (bloody Finland, didn't really even get dark and then the sun started shining around 4am!) and I actually didn't sleep very well at all. I dreamed about my niece last night when I did sleep though. She's got me wrapped around her little finger already and I love her with all my heart.

To be honest I already felt a close connection with her through videos sent by my brother and video chatting that we'd had phone to phone over the last year or so but after meeting her now I feel very close to her. She has recently had some medical concerns, if you follow her blog @smallsteps you will know this already, and we were (and are) very concerned about her. She's not been declared 100 percent yet and we are all still watching her carefully but for now she seems like the best thing ever and I simply adore her so much more than I can convey in words.

The image in this blog is me and her last night. She has another photo of her and I on her own blog from last night and if you want to see us with matching ribbons in our hair head over there and check it out!

So, right now we are looking forward to starting our first full day here in Finland. @tarazkp, his wife @momone and the indomitable @smallsteps are coming over here shortly and we're going to hang out. I can't wait to see them all, but especially her royal cuteness herself, my amazing and special niece.