Passing the parcel

Zac won the Pass the Parcel today at a birthday party, and spent the rest of the day on a high of excitement. In other news, Tabitha tolerated the swimming pool without screeching too much, and Yasmine helped me sort the washing without moaning. Good day all round!

Plum

Tabitha has been off-colour today. She was sick again this morning, putting paid to my hopes that yesterday's car sickness was just carsickness. We have had a "quiet" day at home as a result; the two older children silently seething because our planned trip to see Wall.e has been postponed, and the baby Tabitha silently delighted because she got to wrap her chubby little legs round me all day long and be cuddled, all hot and heavy on my chest or hip.

This afternoon as the day stopped being quiet and the screeches and hair-pulling from my brood got more frenzied my mum swooped in to save me and took the older children to the park. Tabitha and I therefore got to have a quiet afternoon together, during which she made me many, many portions of imaginary "chips an' ketchup" and fed me several cubes of wooden cake in between her demands for stories. Eventually I bribed her away from my lap with the plum in the photo: she loved it, and cried when she learned we didn't have any more. I decided her tummy bug must be all better after that. The older children are hoping that we can now see Wall.e tomorrow.

Beside the seaside

Near-perfect day today - a memory snapshot day. Clear blue skies, acres of sandy beach, a warm sea, and lots of happy children playing and giggling while we, their mums, chatted and ate their picnic leftovers.

Only two things marred today's perfection. Firstly, I've been horribly sunburnt, and look like a lobster; secondly, Tabitha threw up spectacularly twice on the way home. I'm sincerely hoping it was carsickness due to the heat and too much ice cream...

Home

I'm off work this week with the children, so this is where I am.

My front door was red until very recently, and I'm still pleased by its new green shininess when I come back from anywhere...

Bye bye to Anna

It's a weekend of much poignancy - this afternoon Zachary waved goodbye to his best friend in the world, Anna, from whom he has been inseparable since babyhood. Anna and her family are moving about 150 miles away, leaving on Tuesday, and there was a wine-drenched barbecue this afternoon as a farewell party.

I took the photo shortly before we left - Anna's sitting on the pink space hopper, with Zac and my youngest daughter Tabitha to her right. Another little friend (Benjamin, at the front) joined in for the photo opportunity!

Slipping through my fingers

On the right-hand side of today's picture is my eldest daughter, Yasmine, wearing her pink rucksack and a nervous, excited expression. It's a choir trip to Sheffield and it's the first time she's been away from home without family or close friends. We waved her off first thing this morning; she won't be home until Monday evening, and she beamed widely as the mini-bus pulled away half an hour after I took this photo.

This picture has the essence of darling firstborn Yasmine - slightly unsure, hanging back shyly, beautiful and nervous and polite.

In the middle of the photo, pointing at the mini-bus is Yasmine's choir master, the indomitable Mr Goodwin, who can reduce grown men to tears with a glare. He is in a cheery mood today, and the whole choir party was touched with a light-hearted atmosphere. I wished I was going with them as they pulled away!

In two weeks Yasmine will be leaving me again, this time for a week's "summer camp" at PGL with two of her friends. I have the sense that this summer marks the end of her "little girl" years; next summer she and her friends will be allowed out on their bikes and to parks on their own for the first time, and summer holidays will change forever.

I dealt maturely with my unexpected feelings of confusion and sadness when I'd waved Yasmine off, though. I ate a lot of fizzy cherry cola bottles very fast, and bought some cute pyjamas for the baby.

It begins

A photo for every day of the year. Even I can manage that....

Today's is my son Zachary, proudly showing me how he's arranged his pens and pencils in his pencil case after "doing some writing". Zac finished his first year of primary school yesterday and the difference between this year and last is phenomenal. This time last year, he had no idea what a pen was!

I love his scruffy hair and the slightly mismatched clothes he chose himself - it's the first day of his summer "look" and it's all about relaxation from today for the next six weeks.

To his left is the understairs cupboard, the hidden messy horror of which gives me panicky nightmares. By the time Zac goes back to school, he WILL have had a haircut, and I WILL have ventured under the stairs and tried to make a path through the chaos. I won't go so far as to say it will actually be organised, though.