Birthdays
Kids birthdays. Hard work for the parents — and frequently expensive, if you’re hosting the party — but can be very rewarding. Oh, and noisy. Do bring earplugs.
There are certain birthday traditions. We have the ‘Grandma Jenny Cake’, where the kids pick some sort of birthday cake and Grandma Jenny makes it. This year, SWP wanted the train cake, which he’d had before but still looks pretty impressive.
…although he did point out that it doesn’t actually go, which I think was somewhat of a failing. Come on, Grandma. Can’t you make a cake that actually moves?
We held the party at a place called The Giants Den, which is basically a large soft play area, where you pay for the kids to have a run around there for a bit, and then they get some food in a special party room. BTP wasn’t keen on having his photo taken, and this was the only picture I could get of him there when he wasn’t covering his face or trying to hide his head under the table or something…
It was really a joint party for both BTP and SWP, with nursery friends of both of them in attendance. We will be having a second birthday party — really just for BTP — later in the month, with the people from his class at school in attendance which will hopefully give us a chance to get to know some of the other kids, and their respective parents a bit better.
I’ve spoken to a few of the parents from time to time, and it just brings home to you how much, once you’ve started taking your kid to school, your own identity becomes completely lost. For example, I know Harry’s Mam, Matthew’s Mam, and Michael’s Mam as they all live on our route to school. I am vaguely aware that they probably have names in their own right, but in my head they are pretty much permanently tagged as someone’s parent.
And I’m sure they think of me pretty much the same. Although presumably as BTP’s Dad.
And we also went to Grandma’s house for tea. It’s not a particularly unusual event in itself, we go there fairly regularly, and we took a little shop-bought chocolate cake (not in the same class as The Goldfish’s Dalek Cake) which SWP very much enjoyed.
And it’s simply because I took the photo of him very much enjoying the last few crumbs of his cake that I bothered to mention it at all — but I needed some sort of excuse to include that photo, which I think amply demonstrates how much he had enjoyed it!
Hello. I am 
our lass knows all the mothers of the kids at our big’uns school now and fills me in on the village gossip all the time.
but every time it comes to a party every one of them is just ’someone i’m sure i’ve seen before’.
Don’t let the kids see the photo of the Dalek cake otherwise that’ll be next on their list and I’m still in the middle of icing BTP’s pussycat cat !
Sorry, pussycat CAKE.
Lovely pictures!
I would make you - or uh, your lad - a Dalek cake but I never much doubt it would get through the post intact.
In the meantime, I am very relieved to learn that Grandma Jenny does not ice pussycats.