Happy Birthday!

How do you count the passing of time? For me it has always been through the growing up of children. Not always my own. Years ago my very good friend had children before I'd even thought I'd ever be a mother and watching them grow back then, that was my marker of time. One of them has their own children now - all so strange in a way - it's part of what we are here for as a human race, yet the passing of time is not an even flow, where does it all go?

Last week I met up with a few of my anti natal group. All of our oldest children are now 20, were 20, within 6 weeks of each other. It's a strange mix, that group. We all get on but we are all so different and the only way we know each other is the fact that we conceived within weeks of each other and lived in the same district nurse area.

Years ago when we managed to leave the 'ankle biters' for the night - which was never easy - we used to exchange birthing stories! No, really, there's somethings you can only appreciate with certain people and we all knew each others stories well. This week we talked about the menopause! Yep, that's how long it's been.

And here's the real reason for this post. This week it's Small Sprogs birthday, he is 17. So how did we come this far? We have had a family day with Laser Tag and pizza to celebrate early. Everyone attended as did a new comer - Tall Girls first boyfriend. I love the way we have so many more people in our family now and the love is very tangible whenever we get together, I am truly blessed.

So, 17. Its only a year since I wrote this post  and we were still living in Bristol, just the 3 of us and I wasn't married quite yet.

Every year, at poignant times, I do the looking back/looking forward thing. I do it much less often and I can't remember the last time I did it with regret. At the moment I do it with pure wonder. How did I get here? How did I get us all here?

These days its not all up to me. Big Al is great at planning and I can take a back seat with the worrying too. I guess somethings are meant to be? Do we make our own future?

How do you count the passing of time?

In which we look for something that is lost...

We turn up at Mums at about 11am. I ring the bell. She's in instant panic mode even though she knows we're coming. "I've lost Tall Girls 'speciality' tea!"she exclaims.
"Never mind, I'm sure we'll find it" I sooth.
"But she gave it to me for Christmas" she said.

We wander in.

She's often flustered these days, she's always been good at loosing things but now she panics more about it. The other day she lost her car keys, they had fallen out of her pocket into my car, and it was very nearly too much for her. Of course there have been times in the past where she's left her purse on the bonnet of the car and had a couple of hours elsewhere before missing it, only to return and it still being there - goodness knows how that happened. And remember the Christmas presents that survived a short journey on top of her car instead of inside?

Anyway, she boils the kettle and we start to look for the tea.

Tall Girl reminds me it is in a bright orange box - you'd think that was difficult enough to lose but nope. We searched every cupboard in the kitchen and then took to looking in other rooms too, even the bathroom, but to no avail. What had she done with it? We give up. We both have a sneaking suspicion that she's thrown it out by mistake.

Our time there passes pleasantly and we all resign ourselves to the fact that the tea is missing and may never be found. It's like there's a whole Bermuda Triangle somewhere in that house.

Later at home Tall Girl gets a text *found it!*
"She's found it" Tall Girl passes the message on
"Is that it?" I exclaim, "Is that all she said? Where did she find it?"
"Hang on, I'll ask"...

Turns out she'd forgotten she'd decanted it into a jar and put it in the food cupboard. Quite sensible really, if only she'd remembered.

Still, I opened the dishwasher last week to put in some food that needed to be kept cold! Well it was almost the fridge!