The Lockdown Birthday Boys

Eric was born 4 days after Dan's 31st birthday, bad planning there. Some people say, when they give birth on their own birthday, "it's the best gift ever." Each to their own, but I always think "really, always having your birthday overshadowed by your child's birthday is the best gift ever?" Have you never received a scalextric? I really tried had to make Eric not be born on Dan's birthday, he was going to be induced early (because he was too tiny and they were worried he wouldn't get enough from the placenta) so I sort of had a bit of a say over the induction day, but in the end he came before being induced so 4 days apart was the best I could do.

It was hard to think of a way to make Dan's birthday special, in lockdown, with our kids, in bad weather. If one of those 3 factors were different I could think of ideas, but you have to be pretty creative to think of a way to make a day special locked in your house with your crazy kids who you've had no break from in 6 weeks. We had a bit of a dilemma about whether he should take the day off work. It seemed a waste of a day, but also we wanted to make the day different, so we decided to do it and it was a good choice. 

I got up first with the boys and we decorated the house with balloons and homemade bunting, he had a couple of presents and we played Happy Birthday (the Stevie Wonder version) as he came down. We actually made him cry! Result!

 

I had collected a few video messages from a few of his close friends, including our old friend Will in Australia, they were really lovely. The main fun thing you can still do in lockdown is eating and we all love to eat nice food, so we had a special breakfast of pastries, a special party lunch and a takeaway for tea. Dan even got these very special artisan biscuits in the post, but when he wasn't looking I switched them for custard creams. Ha ha ha I'm hilarious.

In the morning it was cold and windy but not actually raining, so we used the opportunity to get out to Otterspool. In the afternoon we snuggled up and watched the film "The Incredibles". I doubt it would have been Dan's first choice if we didn't have kids, but it was a nice compromise. The best thing about home schooling is you can just decide to sack it off for the day if it's your Dad's birthday. 

In the evening Dan's sister Lydia organised a family quiz, Dan's brother Josh even got up at 4am in Korea to join! One round was a picture round on famous land marks from above, like the Taj Mahal etc. We couldn't work out this one of a normal looking house, I thought it must be a celebrity house like the childhood home of John Lennon or something, but after a lot of back and forth we realised it was actually our current house!

On Sunday it was Eric's turn for a birthday. I think it's a bit easier to think of fun stuff for a 3 year old, and actually 3 and younger is the perfect age for a lockdown birthday. They are happy with lots of attention from us and don't particularly need loads of other people in the house. He woke in the morning forgetting it was his birthday and said "mummy come and look at the morning mist." He was very excited about the morning mist until he realised it was his birthday. He had a lot more presents than Dan, all the family had sent stuff. He's Fireman Sam Mad at the moment so there were a lot of fireman related presents and a few garden toys. We did the homemade Elmer Piñata too. 

We spent the whole day in several different forms of fancy dress, because why not! We had online youtube church followed by coffee on zoom with our church friends. This was the first time we'd tried this and it was a bit weird because when you're having coffee after church you don't talk to 20 people at the same time. But it was nice and they sang happy birthday to Eric and we cut the fire engine cake.

Then we had some delicious food and social distancing visits from our friend the Nevils and Dan's parents. 

I hope we'll find this photo in the future and wonder "what was going on here?"

We also made a social distancing visit to our friend Steve, who also had a birthday that day. Still in fancy dress obvs.

We had a short virtual party, which consisted of musical bumps which didn't really work because no one could hear our music, a scavenger hunt and a magic show, from our very own magic boy.

We ended the day with a sleepover and watched the new Lady and the Tramp. The boys were super excited to sleep downstairs and we were thrilled to be woken by a lot of jumping the next morning! #sarcasm.

I can't believe my baby is 3! I really am gutted that he's growing up because he's just too cute at this age. I didn't mind Percy growing up I was excited to for him to reach new stages, but it seems really sad now to be leaving the baby stage behind. The little voice, the way he neatly fits onto my lap, the way he walks and moves that isn't quite like an adult. I really don't feel like this about actual babies, I was relieved when we reached his first birthday. It was like "Happy birthday not long to go until you get fun" and sleep deprivation really makes me a horrible person.

Eric at nearly 1

Sleep and money are the main reasons that we're done having babies, but to focus on the positives, I am super excited to be a bit more free again. In September Eric will get his free nursery hours (hopefully if nurseries are open again) so I can get a job, or have more time to give to making comedy a job, or try and go back to the art workshop stuff I used to do. But also we can just do more fun stuff that we've been too scared to try with tiny people, like camping and ice skating and cycling. I hope when the world is open again we'll be ready for a lot of family fun.