Last week, Emily picked up a Ladybird book of stories at the children’s centre. This one, we thought, was worth sharing.
The Black Ribbon
Reply
Heatwave
Joshua: Do I have to have sun cream?
Me: Yes, you do.
Joshua: But I don’t like it.
Me: Listen, your brothers are younger than you and neither of them complain. Let’s just get it done. You’ll thank me when you’re thirty and don’t have skin cancer.
Joshua: But why is it so important?
Me: Because if I don’t give you sun cream, YOU WILL DIE.
Joshua: …OK.
Artistic license
Joshua: Daddy? Would you like to hear my version of the Easter story?
Me [with some trepidation]: OK…
Joshua: Well, Jesus goes on the cross.
Me: Right.
Joshua: And then he gets shot with a bow and arrow.
Me: Why does he get shot with a bow and arrow?
Joshua: Well, because it’s my story.
Me: Fair enough.
Joshua: Daddy, I couldn’t exactly change all of it.
This is not what I meant (ii)
Two days after Joshua took his Leapster into the garden, I find this in a six-week-old Private Eye…
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How to do a children’s party
Anyway…
I have, on more than one occasion, mentioned that Thomas will latch onto a thing and then run with it. First he became obsessed with jigsaws. Then he became proficient at everything on the CBeebies website. Then he taught himself to read. The new thing is road signs. He’s been looking at the semiotics and what the different types of notices actually mean, which has led to regular interruptions on car journeys, where he’ll ask me for the identity of a particular sign that I missed because I was concentrating on the road (and because it’s a stretch of road I know so well I no longer even notice the warning signs). Those of you familiar with the I-Spy books may be aware that they’ve recently been relaunched, and we have been looking out for the road signs one, but thus far unsuccessfully.
We’d been asking Thomas for weeks what he wanted to do for his party, and this turned out to be a mistake, because he would change his mind as often as I change my underwear (which is daily, if you really wanted to know). First it going to be a tooth party. Then it was going to be a bogey party. Then he had the idea of a fish party, and we thought we’d hit the jackpot. Then we were back on the teeth. Finally we stopped asking and decided to just do whatever felt right on the day.
But road signs basically fit. It was on the Thursday before that Emily had the idea, and she spent the rest of the week finding colouring sheets, counting the red and black pens, sourcing triangular biscuits for a craft activity and cutting out road-patterned letters. There are only so many things you can actually do with road signs when it comes to food decoration, but the red-amber-green pattern of your average traffic light system gave us ample opportunity for colour coordinated buffet displays, as you’ll see below.
I will shut up now, and let the pictures do the talking. Suffice to say I think Em outdid herself this year, and I’m very, very proud of her. And the children – particularly Thomas – all had a great time, and ultimately that’s the only thing that really counts.
Jelly tots for traffic light biscuit decorating (see below). I wanted to use the white ones for ‘busted filter’, but it was a no-go.
This was rather splendid.
Freshly-decorated bourbon.
Beware of…um, olives?
Traffic light salad
The cake. Simple, but effective.
Only afterwards did we realise why this was funny.
Fairy cakes, courtesy of my mother. (He’d specifically requested the white icing / cherry ones.)
Mmm. Buffet.
Traffic light jelly. The portions weren’t huge so we piled on the ice cream. Note the traffic light drink selection in the background.
Cake time.
We laminated the children’s colouring / drawing sheets along with letter initials, and gave them out as place mats. These are our boys’ contributions.
Next year the theme will be sub-atomic physics, with a cake resembling a neutrino…
This is not what I meant
Joshua asked if he could play outside.
<sigh>
Five years
Our middle son has reached a milestone. Birthdays and birthday parties can be traumatic family events, but we got through it with the minimum of tantrums, fuss and tears. (That’s him, anyway. His parents and grandparents were another matter entirely.)
I will, at some point, post photos of the party. Today is not that day. Tomorrow is looking better. Suffice to say there were road signs, which seems to be Thomas’s thing. In the meantime, you can have these, which are random shots I’ve always particularly liked, and which I think encapsulate him. For example, there’s Thomas’s serious, contemplative side…
Then there’s his tendency to mug and pose whenever he realises there’s a camera on him…
He has struggled with sensory overload, empathy and communication, and has taken great strides…
He’s always had fun on the beach…
And oh, how he loved that bear.
He sees the world from a strange angle.
But when given the space he needs, he can be calm and peaceful.
Finally, perhaps most endearingly of all…
Happy birthday, Thomas. It’s been a strange and madly glorious five years. Your journey will be long and worrisome, and you will travel far, but we will never leave you. You’re not always on the same planet as we are, but we wouldn’t have you any other way.
With love always, your mother and father.
