I love my kids' birthdays. Yesterday we celebrated my youngest daughter's eighth birthday. She woke up and I had already cooked her favourite pancake breakfast, her siblings were all seated at the table and we sang happy birthday, she opened her presents all carefully wrapped and it was a magical start to the day. :-). Oh wait, no I must've read that magical start to an eight year old's birthday somewhere else!
Our birthday day started completely different. My just turned eight year old daughter stumbled into my room just after 6am. I blindly reached out to her for a cuddle, she had been banished to her bedroom at 6pm the night before for god knows what and I knew she needed the reconnecting hug. I snuggled her into me and, still half asleep, sang happy birthday to her, morning breath and all! Magical lol. We let the moment last for a few milliseconds and then I told her to go wake the whanau up. Regatta day in Porirua, and my crew of waka ama paddlers had to be breakfasted, changed, packed and ready to go in under an hour. No small feat. The eight year old ripped open presents on my bed, I plaited two sets of ponytails, bellowed at the older kids to pack the lunch I'd made the night before and fill the water bottles, washed and changed myself, thought about breakfast, flagged it and assumed everyone had eaten. We left at 6.52am. Only seven minutes late.
We reached the petrol station where the teams were meeting, I did a quick stocktake. No one had had breakfast, my youngest son had no jacket and no shoes, the chilly bin for lunch looked strangely like a bright yellow PaknSave bag, and we had one water bottle - by default, it was leftover from the last outing. Inwardly damning my lack of follow up before we left, I handed cash to my oldest son to go buy me a mocha from my favourite Streetwise coffee cart . Caffeine. When all else fails there is caffeine. I went inside and stocked up on water, bought a raspberry lamington for Mr 5 for breakfast and handed more money to my oldest daughter to go buy me a mocha from my favourite Streetwise coffee cart. Duh. Not a magical birthday start at all!! Saturday sports days that start at 6am will be the death of me.
The rest of the day was pretty damn good. My paddlers did really well, enjoyed the day and got some fresh air and exercise. I was caffeined up and enjoying the show from the side, and the five year old was ignoring all the requests not to throw stones, and was throwing stones. We went shopping after waka ama (having made an executive decision to leave Miss 14 waving the starting flags for the races from the back of a boat in the middle of the Porirua Harbour lol) and treated the birthday girl to a birthday lunch - she chose Maccas, the 5 and 10 year old did too, I had sushi and the neverending pit of a stomach on my twelve year old son had Indian. Nothing makes Mum's feel like they're getting something right than seeing them all happily eating. I was exhausted though. We made it as far as the QEII turnoff and I knew I needed to pullover. We pulled over and the boys and I crashed in the car at the park while the girls wondered off and explored the beach. I managed ten minutes of sleep before thoughts of water disasters, wondering children and loud family picnics woke me up. We got home, tidied up, had leftover salad rolls for tea and then the long awaited geocaching session was on! We geocached (see next post) and then on the way home the birthday girl got to choose her very own birthday cake from New World. What can I say, that's how busy solo Mum's do it.
A song, a piece of cake and then one happy, exhausted eight year old crashed out on the couch. Much love my beautiful Princess, may all your birthday wishes come true.
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