Birthday season..

It is birthday season in our house. Over half of my children where all born within three weeks of each other’s birthdays…..*cough*

Which is good on a number of counts.

1. You get it all out of the way all in one go and then it goes very quiet for a while.

2. Thrifty relatives can send lots of birthday presents all together in the same little bundle

3. You can bank on sept/october being a pretty expensive month (tho that might not be such a good thing)

4. Chowing down on party food opportunities is limited. Isnt it better to eat all in one go than spread it out?

5. Any whinging along the lines of ‘when am i going to get some presents?’ can be met with a triumphant “NEXT WEEK!”

There are obviously downsides to it however and it has to be said that my head spins on my neck for most of the last bit of sept and October…oh and then its the C word but lets not go there…never mind that another one of my kids is 7 days after the noel event.. okay so planning not a strong point….ever…

Anyhoo…first up on the birthdays has been my oldest girl. She wanted a ‘pony party’ as in lets all have a riding lesson. So she invited some of her friends and they went to a local stable to have a riding lesson. It was an incredible trip down memory lane for me. I spent a lot of my years when i was younger around horses and going to the yard the first time, one molasses filled breathe in and i was transported back to frosty, quiet mornings hacking out across the countryside and returning home flushed with the excitement of flat out gallop across an empty field.

There was no galloping, lead rein ponies looking moderately bored, as they always do, plodding placidly round an outdoor school and finishing of with the old classic of ’round the world’ Good to see that some things don’t change. It felt so nostalgic watching her and her sister ride. Like looking back at an old picture..only the characters had changed.  For now its just a one off…dont know how long that will last though.

Finishing off the day with cake, of course and then little cupcakes for party bag substitutes. I HATE party bags and will do anything to avoid handing them out. No parent has EVER been blessed by one of those tacky cheap whistles that kids then blow for the next 2 hours driving their parents to the edge of sanity…OR the other cheap crap that gets thrown in the bin as soon as possible or wedged down the side of a car seat for the rest of time.

🙂

im joining in with my blogger friends with Monday Club by the lovely Sarah Miles. Head on over and catch up on some other ordinary mums doing an extraordinary job in raising their kiddies.

 

themondayclub

 

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silent sunday

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#saturday caption day…

 

Its that time of the week folks. Look who i discovered earlier this week…. Im working saturday folks so will be back to comment in the evening. thanks lots

 

 

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Finding the gold

Finding the gold: When old prospectors would look for gold they would take large pan and grab up huge loads of gravel and sand, shaking it backwards and forwards to encourage the heavier gold to the bottom of the pan, at the same time the lighter materials which are worthless are worked up to the surface and swept away. This process is repeated until all that is left is the heaviest most valuable material. 

My finding the gold project is inspired by this description, searching through the daily stuff of life that is ultimately worthless…the stress, the what ifs, the tantrums, the work nonsense,…and finding those valuable bits of my day, my week that are the moments i need to remember. The things that catch my eye and are just beautiful in their simplicity unbidden and untouched by the daily grind. Things that make me smile, even if sometimes that smile doesn’t linger and stay.

Some weeks it is harder to than others, sometimes the pan feels like it is only full of gravel and sand. There are weeks when its hard to keep going, searching through the detritus of this crazy, busy, frantic stage of life. Times when having time to catch you breathe seems impossible let alone stopping to look… but then you catch a glimpse, even in the darkest of darkness a small shard of gold can shine out and lift your spirits.  Even if it is just one piece.

Can you find the gold in your day…?

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a little lesson in crossing the road….

I have been really struggling to blog lately. If only there was more ways of getting more time. That and having incredibly clingy pre-schoolers who seem to be unable to exist without me for a couple of hours. When I say without me, i mean sitting on my lap, hanging onto my leg kind of without me. Yeah…not much getting done. :-/

So i am making a HUGE effort this week..because really I love my blog. I was thinking the other day just how much. I have loads of other ‘hats’ that i wear but this one is close to my heart and i miss it when i dont come and hang out a little here….

To that end..im joining in with my blogger friends with Monday Club..which if you follow the link you will see that it is in fact wednesday witter dressed up for another day by the lovely Sarah Miles.

So back to that lesson…

about a week or so ago I was walking back from nursery with my youngest and she had convinced me to allow her to walk. I am NOT crazy about such little toddlers walking, they trip over, they stop, they wonder off. Yes sometimes you have to stop and smell the flowers but every frickin’ one?

So we were making slow progress towards home and tbh against my better judgement i let her stay out of the buggy to cross the road. We awaited the green man and walked across with her making unhappy noises about being forced to ‘hold hands’ ….. then she tripped and as i had hold of her hand I sort of half lifted, half stopped her falling… then i felt it…..

squeamish look away….

the tension in her arm changed in my hand and she started to scream and scream….her arm dropped to her side…

and my heart fell like a stone…..

This had happened to one of our older kids years ago and so I was pretty much 100% sure i knew what had happened. Its one of those injuries that is so common but as a parent you just want to sob into the arms of the a&e nurse and beg them not to inform social services and take your child away.

The first time this happened (it wasnt me that had done it that time) I seriously thought that we would get to our local kids hospital and they would discreetly note down our daughters name on the ‘at risk’ register. But we were cheerfully informed by the consultant…’yes happens all the time’

Incredibly this injury which is called ‘pulled elbow’ only effects kids under the age of 5, owing to the immaturity of their joints, and is renders the arm completely useless and lifeless..which is SO SCARY. But it is remedied with a quick twist back into place *faints*  and then usually the kids are back using their arms within minutes and the pain has gone.

We went to the kids a&e, me silently praying that the legendary queueing times would be shorter than the next millenium. This happened in the morning and I was already making plans for who might be able to pick the kids up from school.

But incredibly we were through and out of there in an hour, hindered only by the consultant conducting a little teaching session with a couple of, what i assumer where, medical students. Their diagnosis of the problem was rather worryingly a dislocated shoulder!!

She was completely insulted, as you would expect, screamed and clung onto me like a limpet and scowled at anyone of the nurses who tried to talk to her. BUT she was using her arm within a minute or two, encouraged by me dangling a packet of chocolate buttons near her previously limp hand. Wonderful to see your kid using both their arms, ah the simple things!

She fell asleep shortly after we left and I dropped in on a dear friend for a cuppa to calm my nerves.

Quite and ordeal for the school run i think!! So the morale to the story is when they are little try and grab them above the  elbow if you need to….and don’t swing them around from their hands helicopter stylie..an under the arm pit lift and swing is better!

here she is back ‘on form!’

themondayclub

 

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