Paul Davidson
Weeknotes 088: And now we’re three
Every day has finished with me thinking if you can’t enjoy the good days, what’s the point? In other words, a good week.
It kicked off with the anticipated third birthday. The first time we’ve had more than just the grandparents around for it. We staggered the presents through the day to avoid overwhelming her before anyone arrived. No such concern for one of her little buddies who, on arrival, navigated to the toy-shelf and systematically worked his way from top to bottom. No playing outdoors for him. Full points for comprehensive coverage.
Hard to say who had the most fun:
- Me manning the BBQ with a Best of Pride playlist (Happy Pride everyone!).
- Granddad holding court at the sandpit
- One of the older girls setting up a dining roo beauty salon
- Lǎoyé as a professional photographer
- Kids arguing over who’s the best friend
- The cavalcade of tattoo’d kids alternating between the swing and the trampoline1
- The Chef, beaming with pride, when she brought out the Strawberry sparkle cake
Piglet was less enthused by the cake, breaking down into floods of tears. As we discovered much later at bath-time (in between cleaning the shower pane), because she wanted to sing Happy Birthday indoors. At the time all we got from her was, “glub, gnar, wah!”
The next day, we headed up for a day trip to Edinburgh Zoo. Piglet sheepishly asked if she could go dressed in her new bee outfit and who are we to refuse the birthday girl? It was as sickeningly cute as you’d imagine. We had a constant background presence of delighted smiling strangers. We managed a full bus-train-bus-zoo-bus-train-bus journey flawlessly, which was a (pleasant) surprise. Piglet was more interested in the animatronic dinosaurs than the real animals. Till we got to the otters at least. The only animals with a cool spot to play in.
Not wanting to squander leftover sunshine and meat, we had another BBQ mid-week. The pride playlist was gone, so we got on with the new Florence + the Machine.
Back at work, isn’t this natty video demo by Alice Bartlett just perfect?
On Saturday, the Daisies ante-natal crowd had a combined birthday party at forest school. Hungover and ill parents happy to let the kids run free. And very welcoming of open fire smores at the end. In the afternoon we went across to the Heaton Park Festival. Exhausted and full of burger, I lay on a sunny hill listening to the choir do rock covers while Piglet played with kids on the climbing frame.
We rounded off the week strawberry picking in gale force winds. The matching strawberry dress wasn’t warm enough for enjoyment and we hightailed it the the third and final third birthday party of the week. A smaller affair with only three kids meant everone could play together on the mini bouncy castle. The others were more rough than Piglet is used to, but she used her freakish strength to head off any incipient displeasure. Nothing but delight by the time the train cake was being fed to bellies full of BBQ.
A good week.
A disagreement broke out of who was Piglet’s Best Friend. Tres cute.↩︎