‘…a pixie, the faeries, a grumpy troll and the witch’

…. I was lying on a very uncomfortable hospital bed, waiting for yet another lot of pessary’s to take effect while nurses and midwifes used me as a pin cushion all in preparation of the arrival of my first born, Natalie, my big girl. She arrived at 11:45pm - so only just on the 28th, it was a Bank Holiday Monday the day after and because she was unexpectedly small, Alex had to rush around trying to find nappies to fit a premmie baby!

So here she is now 7 years later, looking gorgeous. She is very loving and giving, is a great (help to me with her…) big-sister to Hermionie, loves to know ‘everything’ and be involved with ‘everything’, is very clever for her age (I think anyway, but hey, this 7 year experiment is my only source of information so I think I’m biased!) is a Doctor Who nut, is looking like she might want to be a Vet, is Home-educated and I’m just very proud of her.

Hermionie has also been building up to this day, she is soooooo excited about her sisters birthday (well, ok, maybe she’s excited about the BBQ!), she has been saying ‘apay you you’, which translated from troll-ese is ‘Happy Birthday to you’, she get’s really excited when she gets a chance to ‘Happy Birthday’ and she really loves her sister - well, most of the time!

We decided to have a BBQ for her birthday months ago, when we thought that by 28th May - surely it would resemble spring-come-summer - HA! - were we wrong - at least we have the shelter of the patched-up gazebo.

I had to dip out fairly early on to check on my Mum, who - after talking to my desperate-to-phone-me-for-help brother - wasn’t right! I checked on her, woke my Dad and phoned the surgery to get her checked on, after a while she was looking better so I left my Dad to get her to the surgery. Later my brother phoned to say she seemed OK now but was on her way to the surgery.

Got back to find everyone had arrived and S was handling everything indoors (thankx!) with Alex tending to the BBQ, while FiL wibbled on some more!

So, we had most of our close family and our friends round to celebrate Natalie’s day, lots of food, lots of DSing, PS2ing on Buzz Junior Robo Jam, a present disguised in a box full of paper confetti that will surely reach the far flung four corners of my house come the end of the week, kids playing, kids laughing, kids crying, kids screaming, party poppers, pin-the-eye-stalk-on-the-dalek, home-made messy fairy cakes (our speciality ), a home-made-triple-layer-marshmallowy-choctastic-birthday-cake (not my speciality but I was proud of it!), a small black poodle with more food dropped on the floor than he knew what to do with and chunky ginger furr-ball of the feline variety that may have gotten a smidgen to close to the BBQ.

Natalie got lots of nice pressies (which from a 7 years olds POV is what Birthdays are about I guess!), although I had picked almost all her pressies from others, so no surprises on my part. We did a pressie hunt for her pressies from us - it went down very well, underestimated her with the clues though - they were far too easy - nice to do something different though. Her biggie was the DS which we managed to get on ebay with a few games and accessories in there as well - she didn’t know she getting it, she wanted one of her own but we told her a porky pie about not being able to afford it - well - we can’t really afford it but she wants to sell her old Gameboys and games - I reckon we should get almost all the DS cost back if we sell them at a boot. She also got a card from her Rainbow Friends and our next door neighbours (who put a £1 coin for every year in the card as well , Natalie wanted to say thankyou straight away so we dropped some cake off for them to enjoy.

I hope she had a nice day this year, when I put her to put, she said she had had a nice day, but she does have a habit of saying the things she thinks I need to hear so I don’t feel bad, then I feel bad ‘cos I don’t know if she’s had a good day or is just saying for me - and round the circle we go.

Anyway - Happy 7th Birthday my darling - enjoy being 7.