When your world is ripped to pieces, you have got to keep moving. One foot in front of the other, just keep moving. It is way too painful to sit still, to ponder, to breathe.

It's been three years since Jude's unexpected departure. Four hours after we had woken up to our different World and all the well-meaning and administrative people who had briefly stepped into our different existense had departed again, we were left on our own and had no idea what to do with ourselves. All we knew is that we could not sit still and we could not sit at home. So we got into our car with the dogs in the back and headed away from the city towards the West Coast and nothingness. We took a random turnoff towards the sea and walked and walked and walked - numb and stunned and broken and unbelieving that life could be so cruel or that we could find the will to fully live again.

And now three years have passed since that terrible day. We woke up today to two beautifully alive little girls - but the light, the feeling, the atmosphere were all the same as that morning and I marvel that we have survived. How could it actually be? We drove up the West Coast again and walked with the dogs and breathed in the sunny autumn sea air. We are no longer numb and stunned and broken but still very unbelieving that life could ever have been so cruel. Some days it is harder than before to find the will to live, most days are just a little less colourful than before, every day is varnished with the consciousness that Jude should be here, growing bigger and smarter, yet he isn't.

Most of all though, I am scared of forgetting this beautiful and busy child who catapulted me into the rollercoaster of motherhood, who changed my life completely, completely exhausted and energised me and who taught me all about selflessness. I so wish he could have met his two beautiful sisters who continue to teach me oh so much.

But we keep moving, one foot in front of the other, day by day. You have got to keep moving.

It's an ordinary passage in an ordinary home, maybe six metres long.

It's the place where I painfully paced at the start of labour, your arrival beckoning. Up and down, up and down, your dad timing contractions and feeling helpless as he watched me writhe in pain

It's where I flung myself down dramatically on the floor from exhaustion in the middle of the night in your first colicky weeks ; desperate for your incessant cries to stop

It's where you practiced some of your first steps -  your dad and I stationed at opposite ends, grinning like cheshire cats and spurring you on with parental pride as you wobbled back and forth between us

Oh how you laughed delightedly as I chased you down that narrow strip, time and time again

And on the morning of your departure, the only thing that came to mind was to pace up and down that passage, your rigid body foreign in my horrified arms; utterly desperate for you to cry again

Your sister now shrieks with laughter and delight as I chase her naked body down the passage for bathtime

We run up and down, up and down, up and down

She excitedly points to the canvasses of you on the wall

"Baba!" she exclaims.

I tell her that that's her older brother, Jude. I wonder when the questions will start. What will I say? Will 'dead' be amidst the arsenal of her first words?

What would you look like today? Would you and your sisters love each other? Would your sisters even be here if you hadn't left?

What was the point of it all? What is the point of it all?

It's so hard to picture you as four.

Here she is - India Jane. She’s now nearly 3 weeks old.

Since we found Jude, Saturday mornings have never quite been the same for me - they have held the association with death and our change in perspective of the world. So it feels right that India arrived early on a Saturday morning - I now have a more recent and powerful association of life being brought into this world.

Breathing out deeply to ease the pain of childbirth in contrast to the pain of not wanting to breathe at all

Listening to India’s fiesty first breath on a gloomy June morning rather than imagining Jude’s last breath while the sun shone brightly outside.

Birth and death, all part of our experience on this earth, both painful and beautiful in some way.

This is completely new territory to us now - parenting a child over 18 months as well as parenting two at the same time.

Most people who’ve had 2 kids at the same time have told me how hectic it is, especially two kids under two. I’m not going to lie - there have been some very humorous and mad and mundane moments in our home lately. Over the past few days I have breastfed in positions I didn’t know that were possible, (while pushing a pram or running after or picking up Mikaela) calmly sang to myself while both kids are crying at the same time and have had many moments of wanting to tear my hair out to the insistent bleating that only a newborn baby can belt out.

Did I mention the sleep in 2 hour segments?

Yes, I've been tempted to crack open a bottle at midday - I’ve heard it’s great for breastmilk.

But mostly it feels good to be actually going through this madness rather than anticipating the madness. And there are so many sweet moments. Mikaela kissing her sister on the head (often followed by a hefty whack) and watching the two of them together. Witnessing Simon with his two girls. The moments between the madness. Mostly, the anticipation of life and of many mad moments in the future as a family.

Bring it on.

Death is at your doorstep. It will steal your innocence but it will not steal your substance. Mumford & Sons, Timshel

It's the time of year again, the time that always catches me by surprise. Amidst the business of the summer season and the gratefulness of everything we have, the end of February ushers in a sense of sadness along with the progressively darker mornings . The subconscious build-up to our ordinary existence being shattered into a million pieces, the theft of our innocence. It's nearly 2 years now.

This year, there are so many more reminders - mainly through your sister who is at a very similar phase to where you were when you left us. We go to similar places, listen to similar songs and have a similar routine to what yours was. Looking at her and knowing how much of our heart-territory she occupies, it seems incomprehensible that we lost something so precious to us - and survived. How could something so warm, squishy, adorable and full of such exuberant and expressive life suddenly be rendered into a hard cold shell without us even having one tiny iota of foresight? No warning, no preparation, no reason, no going back. The disbelief will always be there.

But somehow the blind panic and gut-wrenching agony have subsided and made place for a depth and beauty and relief that is present in sadness. The days of missing you are less lately and in many ways it is comforting to ache for you with all my being and know that you were very real for too short a time and that the love we have for you existed so strongly and still exists. It somehow makes the impossibility of what happened more real.

I haven't gone through your pictures for a while. This one was taken when you were 3 months old and so new and tiny and emerging as a little person. Amidst the sleep deprivation I remember feeling so content and complete. I look at this now and see such innocence. I guess now we have more substance.

My Mikaela Roo

How did a year already go by so quickly?

How did you transform from a tiny floppy newborn to a happy, feisty, ultra-inquisitive, walking little girl in just 12 short months?

In your first few months of life,  I was so scared to sleep in case you didn't wake up - I was convinced that sleep would steal you away, like it did with your big brother.  Oh it was so hard to open up my heart again and let go of that crippling fear of loss.

And yet somehow as the days and weeks have passed by, that fear has subsided and made room for so much more love, laughter, silliness and belief in the goodness of life.  Your cry every morning is the most beautiful sound to my ears, even at 5am. I love creeping into your room at night and just listening to you breathe. Watching you grow and change every single day is a privilege that I will never take for granted.

Happy first birthday my nunu, may we have so many more to celebrate with you.

(This was taken today - I do believe that looks to be a hand on her hip?)

I bumped into someone today who asked me how my trip was. What trip? I wanted to ask. We got back 2 weeks ago and it feels very far away. I've had a lot of people asking me for photos from our holiday and am determined not to let a whole year go by before I get to them! (Yes, Bali is still to come!)

I spoke the other night at the South African Wedding Photographers Annual Party about the importance of playing and photographing things that you're not paid to shoot, just for fun. We spent a lot of time at our villa just chilling (photos of that to follow, it was great!) and not too much time out and about but the few times that we were, it was great to just take photos for fun. As you'll see I like taking photos of bicycles. It was so good to wonder around a foreign country for just a bit and notice abstract details and different sights for no other reason than just because.

I place your baby sister to sleep, night after night in your cot, and think in disbelief that we did just the same thing with you 18 months ago.

We kept your cot - determined not to be superstitious, but needing something to change. We stripped, scrubbed and sanded the dark varnish off every little slat of oak for what seemed like days, as if this act alone could erase the horror of the image it contained.

If I had known what the morning held for us, maybe I would have read your story a little bit slower. Maybe I would have hugged you for that little bit longer, savoured your soft, puppy skin and breathed you all in, so deeply, just that little bit more.

It had been a long day and I hoped that you wouldn't kick up a fuss going to sleep. If I'd known the future, maybe I would never have let you close your eyes, never put you down. Maybe I would have looked at your beautifully alive face just one more time.

You've been gone from this world for as long as you were here. 18 months is not such a long time, yet oh so limitless.

So many days I think we are fine. And we are, we are fine - after thinking that we could never ever be happy again, we have so many happy moments. We are immensely grateful for the here and now and what we have in this moment. We live more in the now than we used to. We savour, slow down and breathe. Deeply. Often.

But deep deep down, I know we will never be the same people and that this world will never be what it was for us before.

You should be three.

I like these images taken of you with my lomo film camera - you were 15 months old and sitting still for even a split-second was not an option. We made friends with pretty much eveyone on the beach. The soft, grainy, bluriness of these echos some part of our new world.

{insert local Cape accent}

'Gees-like it man, I thought that was a teedy-bear.'

So I've been hounded by more than a few people for images of my own beautiful baby girl. And granted, it's been a while.

Here are a few images taken a few weeks ago of the little princess herself in what we call her 'Bling Suit'. The suit is not far from pink (more purple I guess), it's velvet, and yes, those are diamante studs on the front. In the shape of a heart. This was not given to us, I actually bought this for her. This from the lady who swore she would not be one of those mothers who adorned their little princesses in pink. All it took was one stranger to say 'what a lovely little boy' on a trip out dressed in orange  - and she's been decked out in anything very girly since. Who would have thought?