1.  Happy Birthday To You

2.  Gifts

3.  Birthday Tea

A mad day yesterday, which involved an evening meeting for The Office in The City and driving back over midnight, when I scarily became the Mother Of A Five Year Old. I got back after 1am, and went into the Double Bed so I didn’t wake The Man. I woke before 6am and went upstairs.  Son 1 was in the Big Bed with The Man. 5.  How?  When?  Why don’t they tell you when you’re scraping marmite-like poo off a tiny bottom that in an eyeblink baby will be lying on the bed singing “I’m five! I’ve five!  I was four, but now I’m FIVE!” 

Son 1 and Son 2 aged 2 opened the presents from Saturday, Son 1 fizzing with excitement, Son 2 confused but happy enough.  Activity books and cars and Lightning McQueen and Ben 10 and pirate toys. White milk chocolate buttons were tucked into one of Son 2’s presents.  He bit his way in at once.  Cards and wrapped presents drifted apart.  I now have to do a pile of thank you notes… and quite a few will get “Thank you for the lovely… present.” We got him a skateboard, a couple of art kits and a couple of books.  Plus half the fish tank of course.  We tipped out of the house and piled into the car for the trip to school. When we got there Smiling Teacher sang Happy Birthday as we walked in. 

The late night meant I could pick him up when school finished.  He slept on the way home, and then perked up for his birthday tea. One set of Wednesday Brothers were already there, together with 6 year old friend, who we haven’t seen for a while.  The other set arrived. Son 1 ripped paper of presents, ran about with the boys, changed out of his school uniform.  The Man had done another fab job in making all the food.  The children fought and charged and trod toys in and out of the house.  We spread the pirate plastic table cloth outside in the yard and fed them. We did cakes.  And candles.   Next Door looked over the fence with presents for both boys. We sent birthday cake back.  They got tired, the sugar kicked in, grizzles and gripes began. We waved goodbye to our guests. And we didn’t get Son 1 to bed till nearly 9pm.

1.  The Golden Bell

2.  Birthday Boy

3.  Teddy Bears

4.  Night Skies

Son 2 is 2.  Amazing.  Funny, determined, physical, loving, bright, gorgeous. And incredible that if I hadn’t taken tablets we wouldn’t have him.  Conceived the month after we lost Son 1.5.  I took the advice of a doctor who said: “Well, you could take some time to recover from the miscarriage but you’re 42 and every month counts.” I can still remember a dark December evening, Clomid packet in hand, thinking about C S Lewis: “Make your choice, adventurous stranger;  Strike the bell and bide the danger, Or wonder, till it drives you mad, What would have followed if you had.”   We struck the bell… and What Followed got  a handprint kit, Playmobil fish, fish books, a crocodile, a crab, and of course half a fish tank.

Son 1 aged 4y 11m was beside himself for the present opening. Son 2 loved having Happy Birthday sung to him.  I took Son 1 off to school, in the end having to bribe him with parma violets from next Saturday’s party bags. Back home, Wonder Nanny and I pushed Son 2 in the Big Pram over to the Beach By The Garden. Son 2 fell asleep on the way over, and woke within two minutes of us arriving. I’d pictured a day like Wednesday, but the wind was ferocious, so I hired a windbreak. The sea was mighty, great big surfy breakers crashing up against the high tideline.  Son 2 dug and went to the sea for water - taking me with him each time.  We had lunch from the Beach Shack, and then  I went Swimming In The Sea. I have decided this is now a tradition. Every year I will go Swimming In The Sea on Son 2’s birthday.  I couldn’t swim - the surf was too strong. I just swam into each waves, swam/sprang up over the top of each six footer, and had to turn my back into them so they’d break around me and not wipe me out.  I still got wiped out, and rolled around in the shallows.  When I took my costume off it was full of small stones.  We had ice creams and walked back.

Wonder Nanny and Son 2 went upstairs to watch telly, and then played outside.  I got the food ready for the Birthday Tea.  Not a party of course, that will happen next Saturday.  Cold chicken, cooked yesterday, ham and peanut butter sandwiches, hummous with cucumber, pepper, carrot and breadsticks, hula hoops and cocktail sausages. Nanna arrived. Then Son 1, his face worried through the glass of the front door “Have I missed the party?” Before he’d got to Son 2, one set of Wednesday brothers had arrived, then the other. Then the sole girl, with her big sister who was on her way to Beavers. They all brought Teddies for a Teddy Bear picnic.  The boys sat with their teddies for five seconds, stuffed their faces and then ran off to get all the toys out.  I sent out a plate of jelly tot and smartie mini fairy cakes.  Son 1 and Best friend took handfuls and sat behind The Man’s chair in the lounge stuffing their faces. Son 2’s Godmother arrived with Godbrother and Godsister. “Thank heaven you’re here Godbrother,” I said. “We need a light for the candles.” “I’ve stopped smoking now,” he said. Godbrother will be 14 at the end of this month.  We had a Monkey birthday cake and a singing candle with five others.  It was impossible keeping five bigger boys from blowing them out, but we kept re-lighting them and Son 2 seemed happy with his efforts. The cake vanished. The Man let off Poundland table top fireworks in the flower bed. 

After we all went to the Yacht Club with Nanna and the Parents Of The Girls.  Son 1 and Son 2 played with their golf set. Son 1 cried when he hit his ball into the river.  A scarily competent ten year old got in a dinghy and went and brought it back. We sat on benches outside, watching the boats, drinking and talking and talking and drinking. Jupiter shone large in the darkening sky.  “Look at that lovely star Mummy,” said Son 1. “It’s not a star, it’s a planet.” “How do you know?”  “The stars are small and far up in the sky.  The planets are big and nearer the horizon.”  We came back at nine. It was a Good Day.

1.  Birthday presents

2.  Birthday tea

3.  The Parade

4.  Peter Pan

5.  Birthday meal

It’s The Man’s birthday. Son 1 aged 3 y 10m opened all the presents, Son 2 aged 10m scrunched and ate the paper.  Son 1 unwrapped an iPod and various add-on bits,  clearly having no idea what they were all for.  A bit like his parents.    Another part of The Man’s present was when I took both boys into town in heavy rain to buy snacks and drinks, so he could read his iPod instructions.  We bought bread-and-cheese-straws-and-grapes-and-ham-and-smoked-salmon-and-quiche-and-garlic-bread-and-juice-and-milk.  But then Son 2 wanted his lunch, so we had to start back.  Son 1, acted up at the idea of skipping the balloon shop - for him the entire point of the trip into The Town.  So, despite a laden pram and a loudly miaowing infant, we dripped into the balloon shop.  Son 1 chose a farming Happy Birthday balloon for him, and a Thomas the Tank Engine one for The Man.    The balloons were filled with helium, and then we started up the hill home.  It rained and rained.  By the time we got back, the balloons had so much water on them they were floating only hip high.

A two and a half year old, and his parents, and Friend aged Five, and his parents, invited round for cake and snacks.  My idea was the children would sit down and have an early tea ahead of The Parade, while the grown ups drank Buck’s Fizz.  The boys ran riot on floors 1 and 2, while the adults and Son 2 sat downstairs and ate the birthday tea and gossiped.  They returned only for the lighting of the 12 candles on the Caterpillar Cake.  Son 1 and 2.5 year old were being lobsters in The Parade - the startlingly good, funny and very realistic costumes made by 2.5’s mother.  We were all supposed to be meeting at 5.30pm in The Park.  But it rained, and rained and rained.  The mist rolled in over the river so we could barely see the water… it rolled out again.  “It’s clearing,” we all said. It rolled in again.  And then it bucketed down so hard the rain bounced 8 inches high back off the shed roof.

2.5 year old’s parents took Son 1 and me to The Park while The Man pushed Son 2 in the buggy.  It was still very wet.  We dressed the lobsters, and they looked fantastic.  We were walking in front of a giant octopus.  The 2.5 year old’s mum decided against wearing her limpet headdress - she thought it would come to pieces in the rain.  In front of us was a group of French revolutionaries, with pitchforks and guillotines.  Every so often during the parade they would stop and have someone’s head off.  Son 1 and the 2.5 year old were cheerfully shouting “Off off off off off” with the rest of them.  A kind revolutionary always positioned his fake barrel organ so they couldn’t quite see what was going on.  “Why are they waving those buns in the air?” asked Son 1.  Marie Antoinette.  With a plate of cakes on a bricklayer’s hod.      

The rain petered out, and the French Revolution stopped to cut off the head of someone in the crowd.   While we were waiting, five children plus grown up attendants stepped out from a shop porch  in front of us.  Wendy, Tinker Bell, Peter Pan, Tiger Lily, and, very small, and in an impeccable costume, Captain Hook.  How does that happen to me?  Son 1 has a lovely pirate captain’s outfit which he has already practised wearing for his Peter Pan birthday party. The only child in the land with a Peter Pan fixation, and behold! 5 perfect costumes sashay in front of us.    It started to rain again.  The Neverland team drifted off into another shop overhang and we were back with the revolutionaries.   Too late.  Son 1 had the poop-poop expression of Toad when he first sees a car.  “Mummy I want a Captain Hook outfit with long hair and a feather and a glass sword.”

Neverland aside, Son 1 made a great lobster.  Both of them were pointed at, waved to and aaaah-ed at.  He waved back like he was in a boy band, he splashed his tail and wellies in puddles.  He ran full pelt down the street to catch up the French Revolution when we had to wait for repairs to the Octopus.  He held out his collection bucket to everyone.  He blew his whistle in time to the Revolutionaries.  He danced to music from the barrell organ.   The costume-making genius and I had discussed how she could sell such outfits online.  After a cry of “Oh look at the little lobsters, I want one,” we realised we could sell the children too. 

Both lobsters were worn out and clingy by the end of The Parade, so we went straight home.  The Man and I just about got the boys to bed in time for the taxi to the restaurant where we were having his birthday meal. The other couple we were meeting were waiting for us, him in chatty NBF conversation with our ex-MP - unseated last time.  Great meal, good wine, a lot of fun, and a very nice evening.  The friends had bought me a birthday card.  Just a minor detail to get wrong.