First year of being a mummy

Where do I start this blog? Firstly I want to say a huge thank you to Jess, I feel so incredibly lucky to have been chosen by Jess to capture some beautiful timeless memories which we will have to cherish forever & blogs that I can keep to look back on my pregnancy & first year of being a mummy. Im in a complete mix of emotions reflecting on the last year of our gorgeous boy and the little character he is, full of such a cheeky, confident little personality, full of smiles & baby chatter.

I

ow much has changed over those last 3 months before Kobe turned one & how many special moments and milestones we celebrated in those last few months of 2025.

In September I found out that I have been accepted in to my university course so I’m back to uni in February. We had lots more teeth popping through. Trying to enjoy as much of the beautiful sunshine with lots of time outside as possible.

Then the month I had been dreading as my maternity leave finished & I went back to work. I had really debated having longer off with Kobe, but due to all of the rules with being to claim for the “free childcare” I needed to go back to work and be earning 3 months before he was going to start nursery. Luckily, I had annual leave that I could spread out so I ended up only working 1 day a week, which grandad (my dad) looked after Kobe. Then Halloween came! Me & Kyle have never celebrated Halloween & in our old house no one came round to do trick or treating either so we have never bothered. But this year with Kobe and a new house it was my opportunity to get involved in Halloween! We had decorations up in the house, made Halloween crafts, we went pumpkin picking, daddy carved some amazing pumpkins as lion king & Winnie the Pooh! & then we stayed home as Kobe dressed up as Sully to answer the door to trick or treaters .

Kobe took his first solo steps in November after a few months of furniture sofa or walking with assistance – so there is definitely no stopping him now! We also had Kobes first haircut this month, his hair & curls were getting crazy & in his eyes. Wow, how much more grown up does a hair cut make them look! I don’t think we were prepared for that. We also had an impulsive but lovely night away to go & visit Kobes auntie Claire & his big cousins Harry & James who live in Coventry.

Kobe was such a good boy on the journey, slept the majority of the way there & back again & slept so well in the hotel in a travel cot & was lovely to finally get him down there to meet them all. We went to lots of garden centres to see the Christmas decorations and all of the pretty lights too, something I have always loved doing with my Mum. We also started going to a lovely little stay and play group in Hoveton called Lilypads, which Kobe absolutely loves exploring all of the different themes and play stations that are set out.

Then in to the busiest month, lots of Christmas activities, nursery settle sessions, germs, first birthday prep (how is that even possible?!) and Christmas prep. Kobe was poorly for the majority of December – his first proper illnesses. We went through, hand foot & mouth, which he lovingly shared with me haha, coughs, colds, conjunctivitis & he was such a trooper through them.

Kobes first birthday feels like it came around so quickly, but also looking at photos of him as a newborn seems so long ago! I got very emotional setting everything up for him the night before his birthday. A lot of mixed emotions at how lucky we were to have such a cheeky, amazing little boy who has thrived in his first year and also missing my Mum like crazy and wishing more than anything that she was there with us.

We had a little party with a Winnie the Pooh theme in honour of my Mum and invited a couple of friends and their children & my dad over which was so lovely. We then went on the Aylsham bure valley train to go & visit Santa – Kobe absolutely loved the train, popping his head out of the window to watch everything that was happening around him. Christmas again was very bittersweet, Kobe still is at an age where he doesn’t understand Christmas, but I felt I needed to try make it special for him, but again just felt such a loss with my Mum not being there.

Kobe took 3 days to open all of his presents bless him, but was lovely to watch him and enjoy it all (rather than in a few years time where everything is opened and done within a matter of hours – if that haha).

Now for us we are going in to the new year with Kobe starting nursery, me going back to work more hours & then in February me restarting the next part of my university course. I want to focus on us building lots of core memories & taking every opportunity as you really don’t know what life is going to throw at you. I can’t wait to see all of the new milestones that Kobe is going to keep going through and all of the new things that he learns. He is in the copy everything we do stage at the moment, which is the cutest! I still feel like I am the luckiest Mummy in the whole world to have been blessed with such an amazing .

THANK YOU, Carly, for your honest account of Motherhood it has been lovely to have you write blogs for Phoograph Kobe across his first year. You can read all her blogs here.