Favourites.

My favourite instagrams of 2014. (Which may as well be called me 'favourite photos of 2014' because the thought that I took any personal pictures on any other medium is laughable.)

I put together another selection, currently title-less but along the lines of 'the instagrams that sort of define 2014 and why it was good, bad and horrible and nothing like we expected and maybe the most unsettling year of our lives' but I'm still thinking about how much I want to say about all of that stuff so for now you just get my favourites. 

I don't know how much there is to say about them, seeing as I chose them because they're pretty and they make me smile and um, well, that's it. But I know that you like a little more information, so; 

top row

1) Our sixth wedding anniversary. We don't get babysitters unless we have family visiting, so we celebrated with W&P. My mum just reminded me that this wasn't in fact our wedding anniversary, but a lunch she took us for one summer day. I'm losing my mind. I have also started writing at 5.30am, which has its drawbacks, accuracy-wise. We went to The Crystal Palace Market and ate burgers. It's a beautiful restaurant and the food was amazing but the staff were weird and grumpy and utterly unwelcoming so we probably won't go back, which is tragic in the face of such a fucking awesome burger.

2) My Nye, at the Donald Trump golf resort in Ireland, contemplating the ways to murder rubber faced, geriatric Americans who drink Bloody Marys for breakfast and spend their holidays golfing.

3) Puke, on her way to pre-school one beautiful summer morning. Pre-school has been the light of our lives. We live in a noisy, smelly, shitty urban neighbourhood littered with drug dealers and pit pulls and somehow we are around the corner from the most nurturing, most friendly, most happy well-equipt absolutely wonderful council-run nursery school with the most enormous and beautiful garden/play area and the kindest, warmest, most affectionate staff and every day it blows my mind how amazing it is and how lucky we are to have found it and every day W&P sing and dance all the way there. 

middle row

1) My baby. My sweet, quiet, self-contained and beautiful baby. My first born, my friend, my little pain in the ass. 

2) Both of my pains in the ass. On the beach in Nairn, one bloody freezing day, hanging out with our favourite florist who drove from Glasgow to play with us. W&P were dogs that day, they would only answer to Shnitzel Von Krum (with a very low tum) and Bitzer Maloney (all skinny and bony), an identity shift that lasted for three weeks on P's part. Kid has dedication. 

3) Me, Nye, alone in Edinburgh for a wedding. A wonderful day spent visiting our favourite places (The Grassmarket, The Museum of Scotland, Grayfriar's graveyard, Peter's Yard, Under the Stairs) and sobbing on the very spot that eight years previously we had decided we would try and have a baby 

("why are you crying? We had two babies." 

"Yes, but (sniff) it was so hard (sniff) and we DIDN'T KNOW (sniff) when we sat here that it would take (sniff) so long and be (sniff) SO HARD."  

.... " I still don't get why you're crying." 

 hashtag 'scenes from a marriage'.) 

Bottom row

1) P, in Inverness, patting the butcher on the belly. I did the same thing to the same statue when I was a kid in Inverness. I remember walking past him and being awed by his immensity. He's definitely had a paint job since then though.

2) Nye and W, in the hammock in France. A blissful moment in a week of what was, um, let's call it 'turmoil'.

3) Weightlifting. I love these goofs.