Only recently, Daria Alexandrovna Nevskaya travelled through the world mostly lying down. I pushed her in a pram along the water at Dubai Marina while skyscrapers rose around us, yachts moored and people hurried past — and she slept so peacefully, as though the entire city had been built solely to accompany her daytime nap.

Little Daria asleep in her pram against the backdrop of Dubai Marina, August 2022

In August, while we were staying at the Radisson in the Marina, she was already taking her first swims in the pool with the boys. They swam in goggles, commanded ships and created their usual masculine bustle around them, while Dasha held onto the edge with the air of someone observing the department’s work for now, but intending to run it very soon.

Daria has had a swim and is very pleased, though you would not guess it from her face )))

And now, on 8 July, what sits before us is no longer a baby but a fully formed Daria Alexandrovna Nevskaya: long hair, a bow, a book and that particular smile behind which plans are clearly being made.

Daria Alexandrovna in 2026 and Daria Alexandrovna in 2022

Children grow in a rather treacherous way — without warning, approval or written notice to their parents.
Little Daria at Dubai Marina in August 2022 — sailing along the canal on a boat

At first you carry a tiny person on one arm, and then suddenly find a big girl beside you, soon to go to school and, it seems, to understand considerably more about life than she tells the adults.

July 2022, before we left for Dubai — and how little Daria Alexandrovna was:

İzmir, Turkey, where the whole family travelled together: two older brothers, little Dasha with her dummy and me — a man temporarily appointed transport, security and supplier of bottles; Ira is somewhere there too (perhaps she is the one taking the photograph)
Daria gnaws on some bread while the rest of the family celebrates Mum’s birthday