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.  Son 1.5

2.  Sinking

3.  It Seems Like Only Yesterday

Still not doing very well with the fluey cold. I woke this morning with Son 1 aged 4y 8m in bed beside me, tiptoed downstairs for coffee, and suddenly it seemed a very long and hard day ahead. Yesterday was the due date for the one we lost, and even though the following month I was pregnant with Son 2, I still wonder about that child.  The LMP date for him (I will always think of him as a boy) was Sept 11, which is Son 2’s birthday. The only person who will ever know or care about this stuff is me.   Son 2 aged 21m woke, on fine form.  “What would you like in your (snack) tub?” “Gape.”  “What else?” “Boobee.”  We read and stuck stickers upstairs. Son 1 aged 4y 8m pootled down. “I think I should have my fish when I am four, and then I can have more fish when I am five.” “You can have your fish when you’re five.” “I can’t wait that long!” Son 1 says his fish will be called Fluffy and Coupon and Walbert.  I might have to get them early just because he’s chosen such great names.

One Wednesday mother was working. We went to a playground.  The other Wednesday Mum had made sandwiches for all the boys, left on a table top in a takeaway container. A seagull pecked through the lid.  It rained. We gave up, and went back to the other family’s house.  I drove down, and as we arrived we were told that Mother had had to break into her house because she’d left the chain on the front door and gone out the back.   Son 1 and Son 2 had a good play with the three and a half year old.  My paracetamol cocktail wore off, and I started flaking out.  We came back, went into The Town because Son 1 wanted Apple Pie and Custard for tea, and then I made tortilla and buttered spinach.  Son 2 tried licking the butter off the spinach before giving in and scoffing the lot.  We are still boiling kettles for washtime, and yet again, it was very hard. Both of them machine-gunning me at top volume for attention at once, and me with zero energy craving stillness. I think the hot water is the Final Straw. They’re upset by the hole blasted in their routine, The Man being away, and me being incapable because of my bug. Bedtime was awful, and I wasn’t very nice. Being Postive, both The Plumber and The Man will be here tomorrow.

I have had an email from The Boy Who Broke My Heart When I Was 19. I logged in yesterday and there he was.  “I’m betting it’s you. You may not welcome this contact in which case tell me where to go, or ignore, else how are you?”  I replied and said don’t worry, it was fine, how was he?  He’s emailed today with a bit more detail about him.  I’m sure this is the plot of a book.  Our heroine, in relationship for 22 years, married for 18 of them, has children incredibly late, and while struggling with her work-life balance, her besotted small sons, her often-absent husband, swine flu and a major domestic crisis, is suddenly contacted by someone from half a lifetime away.  I’m also sure They All Live Happily Ever After.

1.  Reception

2.  Remembrance

3.  Remedies

“Thankyou Mummy for waking me up when Daddy got back.”  In the middle of the night.  Son 1 aged 4y 5m, climbing into the bed. Being sarcastic.  No memory of my carrying him down two flights of stairs for Daddy cuddles.   The Man being back is a Good Thing.  Yesterday marked 22 years of us Being Together.  One day Son 2 aged 17m will feel special because his parents were together for well over 20 years before he was born….  Two pairs of hands, so things were easier, although kick off was still 0615.   Son 1 was excited, Son 2 was happy but clingy.  Now both parents were around, he wasn’t going to get fobbed off with the Second Best one.  

We went to a Garden with a friend and her 3 year old.  There were nature trails for the children with treasure hunts, and we needed seaweed from the beach, so we trailed down the long steep woodland.  Son 2 walked a bit, was carried a bit, picked up gravel a bit.  Son 1 and 3 year old friend found sticks and fought, and looked in ponds for fish and frogs, and trampled through bamboo clumps.  Son 1 fell over and smashed his nose and forehead on the path.  The sky was blue, the sun was warm, there were few other visitors.  The big pond at the bottom of the valley was filled with foot-long rainbow trout, clamouring underneath a viewing platform, suggesting many packed lunches have headed their way.  Last time I’d stood there I was miscarrying Son 1 and a half.  The memories were vivid. Who we were with.  Son 1 aged 2y 2m in wellies, saying “I’m stuck!” when his foot was jammed between two rocks.   Holding his sticks all the way down.  The bleak, hopeless, misery.  We didn’t get onto the beach that time, so the vivid flashback vanished as we walked up and down the steps. All three boys loved the seashore.  Son 1 and his friend charged around, climbed rocks and balanced on walls.  Son 2 scrunched on the shingle and headed, time and time again, for the sea.   

Back home again and we were all exhausted.  Son 1 and I watched Madagascar.  Son 2 played “beds,” laughing, giggling, cuddling Mummy, and finally pulled out the Thomas Wooden Railway.  Son 1 joined us and we built a track and Son 2 put electric trains on it and added carriages.  He pushed the engines up the bridge and watched intently as they rolled down the other side.  At tea time I made pizza while they both went out into our miniscule yard with The Man, who was trying to put an artificial grass playsurface down across the lethal concrete.  Son 1 rushed for his toy tool set,  hammmered walls and tried to fit pieces of astroturf together.  He was in raptures, helping Daddy, playing with his tools, knowing what the job was.   Son 2 tottered about and fell over a lot.  They were both asleep in minutes of us getting them in their beds.

1.  Asleep

2.  Curry

3.  Flowers

Another dreadful night with Son 2 aged 8m.  Cried in the evening, cried in the night.  Cried for me.  He was obviously in some kind of distress, so I tried sleeping with him  - as he’s been so good about not trying to feed.  He just could not stop crying or roaming around the bed.  So in the end he went in the cot, screaming so much you could hear he’d strained his voice,  and I went downstairs for a cup of tea.  And he went to sleep. 

 Wonder Nanny and The Man think Son 2 is teething.  He’s certainly not himself, poor thing.  I was upstairs giving him another feed after bedtime when The Man was making curry for tea.  The Man is being nice.  He has to go on a week-long business trip on Thursday.  He will miss the taster day for Son 1 aged 3 and a half’s new school.  So much for having a week off work because he’s so tired.  Being positive of course, we have both booked a week off in July.  And I have got Wonder Nanny to help on Thursday.   

 There are flowers in the blue vase in memory of the one we lost.  Who would have been one yesterday.  If he’d arrived on his due date.  If he’d made it.  I always think of him as a boy.  I don’t know how I feel - we wouldn’t have Son 2 if the other one had been born because he was conceived next time round.  But the anniversary bothers me, and I’m glad I remember.  Things do get better.