Dear family and friends,

I am sat at my kitchen table, two flames on my advent wreath dancing along to the children’s songs blaring out of the Tonie box. The snow is weighing heavy on the branches outside, and everything is covered with a white blanket. Lily and Finn are colouring in gingerbread and snowmen while the banana bread is baking in the oven, gently releasing an intoxicating smell.

It’s really Christmas time again! I feel like saying, “time has flown by this year”, but I feel that’s something grown-ups say all the time, as if an additional add-on to growing old is the constant puzzlement of time fleeting.

Compared to the past two years, this one has been a lot less riddled with dramatic loss and grief, so that’s something good. It also feels like the first year without a baby in the house, which makes my sleep cycle smile and my ovaries cry a bit. However, having a toddler and a child in the house is a source of endless wonder and amazement. The things children say are worth writing down, and if I was a little more organised, I guess I’d have a lovely little book somewhere in which I’d note down all the fun things they say, but instead I have haphazard places like my phone, a diary, and random note pads in which I scribble something down now and then (if I don’t forget). Lily has the life determination only a four-year-old could muster, completely convinced she has life figured out and knows everything, while simultaneously reverting to baby mode regularly and making us carry her around. She’s also already figured out to blame her brother when she’s done something wrong (even if he even wasn’t in the room when it happened). Recently she came in with a pair of scissors and told me that Finn cut her fringe, and that it really wasn’t her (spoiler alert: it was her).

Finn meanwhile only has one track he follows: and this track has a tractor on it … and a dump truck, a crane, a car, a train – you get the gist. He loves reminding us that “is schon doß bin” (that I’m big already), and that he loves vehicles, the colours blue, green and orange, and tractors. Having grown up with two sisters, I wasn’t aware how many different vehicles there are in this world, but I am a fast learner and can now tell you the difference between a front loader, a backhoe loader, a road roller, a motor grader, a dump truck and a telescopic handler – it’s a skill set I am sure will prove incredibly important at some point in the future.

While Lily challenged us with her unwillingness to go to kindergarten and it took very long to get her settled there, Finn surprised us this autumn by bouncing into the nursery, running to the teachers, hugging them, waving goodbye and basically telling us in his toddler ways that we can piss off now. He’s completely in love with all the women working there, and (I might be biased saying this but I still think it’s true) I also think they are fully in love with him.

While the first half of the year was rather uneventful, autumn kicked off quite spectacularly. Finn started in nursery; I went back to work. Well, I didn’t go BACK to work, as I started doing something completely else. I now teach children how to brush their teeth. I’ll pause here for a moment so you can deal with your puzzlement. I know, right, teeth. I am in teeth now. As part of a Tyrol-wide program, I am one of many women (and, yes, it’s only women) who go to schools and kindergartens to teach about dental hygiene, healthy nutrition and to show how to properly brush the teeth. For those purposes I have a mildly terrifying hand puppet called “Willi Bürstl” who is a beaver with huge human teeth. He now lives in our guest room, and I still sometimes startle when I hang up the laundry and he looks at me with his huge teeth and slightly wonky eyes.

Going back to work was inasmuch interesting because I really felt the saying “be careful what you wish for.” I feel like I have spent half of the year longing to get back to work, and the other half wondering if I should have another child to get back into maternity leave. Life’s funny that way. But, all in all, I really enjoy working with the children and having a reason to put anything else on in the morning than leggings.

Oh, and then there’s Jakob, of course. I almost forgot about him. I guess that’s what you get when you’re annoyingly content with your life all the time. To sum it up the way he would, Jakob’s “good”. His life is “good” and he thinks next year will also be “good”. Good, then.

Before this letter reaches the size and weight of a porterhouse steak, I’m trying to find an ending, which is always hard for me (which anyone who’s every talked to me knows). Summing up, we really had a wonderful 2024 and have plenty to look forward to in 2025. I’ll be kicking off the year with a trip to my beloved England and Scotland, then we’ll celebrate a wonderful wedding in May, which we are very much looking forward to. We hope to see you, our dear friends and family, in the next year, and we also hope you will have a wonderful Christmas and a good kick-off for 2025.

Love from us!