Friday 30 October 2020

Six

 "When I was one I had just begun,

when I was two I was nearly new,

when I was three I was barely me,

when I was four I was not much more.

when I was five I was just alive,

But now I'm 6 I'm clever as clever,

 I think I'll stay six forever and ever" 

- AA Mille


Last week Percy turned six, he hasn't had a lot of luck with birthdays, he's only really had two normal ones.

When he was One he had pnemonia and was in alder hey hospital.

When he was Two we were sort of homeless (that was still quite a nice birthday, but it is weird to put on a party in someone else house.)

When he was Three we had a lovey pirate party in our current house.

When he was Four I had cancer and was recovering from an op so Dan took Percy and a few friends to a soft play.

When he was Five it was great, he took two friends to Gulliver's World and had a Toy Story cake.

But now he's Six it's a global pandemic, I hope zoom parties won't last forever and ever.


In a few more months everyone will have had a Covid affected birthday. Eric's birthday is in May and he also had a zoom party for his 3rd. I really wan't to give him another one. Imagine 50% of your birthdays being zoom parties, I bet he can hardly remember what normal birthday parties are. Do you think we'll ever blow candles out again? You're basically just spitting germs onto a cake that you share with all your friends.

But back to Percy's big day. Over the last month the restrictions got tighter and tighter until we realised we wouldn't be able to see anyone on Percy's birthday. We still managed to go to the zoo which I thought might have been shut down as a circuit breaker thing. You're not really meant to travel outside of your region but I don't think it's actually illegal.

I wanted to make the zoom party as fun as possible so I made party packs which I gave out beforehand. They had party hats and party bags and stuff to to play games with.






So for example a game that worked well was charades. Everyone had an envelope with the same 8 films listed on different bits of paper. We all had 2 minutes to choose one and decide how to act it out while everyone was muted and then we came back together and one by one acted out that film and people held up to their screen which film they thought it was out of the 8. Pass the parcel worked less well, and ended with me saying "ok everyone just open your present."


We had a lot of fun, and it went on longer than I had planned. This meant that Percys Godparents came to the door with a gift while we were still on the call, so we had to quickly sing happy birthday so we could cut the cake and give it to Katie and Mike who were stood outside in the cold. Everyone on zoom had cake in their party bags to eat too. The best thing about a zoom party is at the end you just say bye press a button and everyone disappears, no one stays chatting for another half an hour or forgets their coat or can't find their shoes, its amazing.

This years cake was a lion. Percy is very into animals at the moment mainly because he's really into the show Andy's Safari Adventure (and all the other Andy shows) it's like David Attenborough for kids. This was actually one of the easiest and yummyiest cakes I've made.

One the Saturday we went to Chester zoo, the day started well. We all said which animals we wanted to see most, Percy's favourite animal has been giraffes for a long time. The boys were running around very excited. 


But two hours in they were difficult to motivate. The weather was bad and we had to queue outside for half an hour to get into monsoon forest, which was a tropical climate indoor bit with orangutang and gibbons that were my favourite. We made the mistake of leaving the giraffes till last and by that time it was really raining, Percy had a hole in his welly and had wet socks, we got completely lost, Eric had fallen asleep on Dan's shoulder and then Percy completely gave up on the idea of looking for giraffes and just wanted to go home. 

We probably only saw a quarter of what there is to see at Chester zoo. Luckily he cheered up a bit in the car once he was dry.


This week we have stolen my parents house something, we often do when they go off on their canal boat. Because Dan is working from home all the time now he can just work from Cheshire and it's a bit of a change of scene to see a river out of the window, even if it is a rainy cold day. 


Well done to the parents who have nearly survived half term in lockdown 2. Its so hard in bad weather, missing you all. xx

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