This is what a baby looks like when not only the mother is everything to him 🙂

As a little Father’s Day side note, here’s another glimpse into our days with this all-boy family! While Rú was off on his own adventures, after work we headed to the cool branch of the Danube in the city, where Wolfie saw such a large body of water for the very first time. And although he looks just like his dad, his personality is mine, so you can imagine how enchanted he was by the gently rippling water’s surface…!

This year’s Father’s Day was a little more special than the previous ones, because a little baby celebrated his daddy with us too! Those who have been reading this diary for a long time know how much I love books, and I read a lot to Rún from the time he was very small. Unfortunately, however, our most beautiful books are carefully packed away in a warehouse in Vác, so the smell of paper and the beautifully painted pictures are missing from our home—at least if we want to read a book in Hungarian. And the books we’ve downloaded on Kindle feel a little far from our emotional world. So…

I love this little stretch of the Danube riverbank — and not only because Laci officially proposed to me here 🙂 But the best part is this self-service book nook! It’s filled with summer-reading books, and thankfully, with the tourist season in mind, there are also English-language ones. If you take a book, you write it in the notebook by the windowsill, and if you’d like, you can drop a few euros into the bulldog piggy bank. Of course, nobody checks anything, so the book nook’s survival, upkeep, and enjoyment really depend on the visitors. And if you look around, you’ll see just how well this little book island is…

Last week we had a four-day weekend, and Rú’s heart pulled her back home to Hungary. And what is a family supposed to do without their teenager…? We go and do things that Rú wouldn’t enjoy that much anyway, so we don’t have to drag her along, and we get an extra program out of it too. Since we had been planning a trip to Bratislava for a long time, this was the perfect opportunity: it was cloudy in Vienna anyway, while Bratislava was pouring sunshine on us at full force! I had never been there before, so while sightseeing I wanted to grab a coffee somewhere that wasn’t a…

Hello, world! I love living here. My favorite things are the trees with their rustling leaves, the lamp above the dining table, the hot-air balloons hanging above my bed, and the rattling teddy bear. My favorite people are my dad, because he is tall and strong, and being with him always feels like I’m sitting on top of a fortress, right at the top of the world. My sibling, because he always makes me laugh, shows me good music that often gets me dancing, and gives me lots of kisses. My mom, because she gives me wonderful warm, creamy milk 🙂 Mami and Papi, because even though we don’t meet…

Life with Wolfie is beautiful — but it doesn’t stop! And one of the spring weekend rituals is always about the plants. That’s how it worked out last weekend: we combined balcony naps with a bit of gardening, which with this amount of plants would normally be a four- to five-hour job. But repotting, fertilizing, swapping flowerpots and, above all, a mother’s hands up to the wrists in potting soil are not compatible with a baby who sometimes wakes up. So, taking into account the cuddling breaks, nursing breaks, nappy-change breaks (and the other family members’ needs directed at me), this fun stretched from Friday through Sunday! To be fair,…

My latest obsession, which I just couldn’t suppress, is making the little hangings above the crib with my own two hands. And I’m sure there are prettier and better ones out there, but in every stitch I can see that cheeky baby smile from when I was lying on the couch, looking sideways as I made the pattern, which was drawn on the inside of Rú’s cereal box. I can also picture sleepy Wolfie while I cut out the pieces, and I hear us singing together while sewing and trying to stretch things out as long as possible until feeding time, because we never get around to finishing the hangings…

No, I don’t find birthdays even a little bit sad after 30 🙂 I’m actually absolutely thrilled that I’ve found my place in the world, in a beautiful place with a wonderful man and two incredible boys. Every day brings something interesting, or something that makes me happy (if nothing else, a half-hour afternoon nap with a baby on my chest). And what was my wish when I blew out the candles…? That everything would stay exactly the way I feel right now.

Since I’ve started reliving the baby years, and alongside that, spending my days with teenage Ruben, I’ve discovered such unfathomable consonances that nostalgia inevitably takes hold of me. In another life, in a small town, Rú was still newborn-sized 14 years ago and made me the happiest woman alive. The days, weeks, months, and years we spent together are among the most beautiful moments of my life. I owe him moments that can never be brought back again: shared laughter, the sound of little feet toddling along at dawn, the scent of warm hugs, and the wishes and dreams we made come true. And I can feel how quickly these 14 years…