Celebrating Being Me

This weekend was my birthday weekend and it started perfectly as if it was an omen for how the rest of the weekend would pan out. Friday morning my work colleagues and I received a thank you gift from a family we work with. KK's for morning tea! Bliss. Some people who hadn't had KK's before thought Krispy Kremes were overrated. I'm not talking to those people anymore because they clearly have no taste buds. Nobody thought they were so bad that they handed me their half eaten donuts however, so frankly I think they were just taking the piss. 

 Friday night involved sewing

Unusually for me I decided not to cook(no laughing from the peanut gallery!)so we ordered gourmet pizza for dinner ...

Saturday breakfast...don't judge me.

Saturday lunch at 3pm was a hunk of cheese which I shared with Indy and Lola. Mainly because Indy was resting his head on my leg and threatening to drown me in drool. It seemed easier to give him some than to have to find a life preserver to ensure my survival....

I spent all day Saturday putting some of my Moroccan Tile blocks together (and managed to crack two whole rows) while intermittently sobbing and repeatedly unpicking. 

Saturday night was spent in the glorious company of my fabulous husband, staying at a hotel on the beach for the night.

We went to Esca for dinner and it was fabulous. (Pictorial evidence of fabulousness below) I didn't think to take a picture of my pancetta wrapped prawns , in red pepper coulis with zucchini and rocket salad, but that was also delicious. I'm a big fan of good food, especially if someone else is cooking it. 

Sunday we had Maccas for breakfast

I opened presents

and I spent three hours meditating in this space , checking out the inside of my eyelids to make absolutely certain they were still there.

Later in the day I spent some more time putting together a couple more rows on my Moroccan tile quilt...my love for that is passing rather rapidly. I'm a pattern dumbarse and I've done something wrong and I'm having to re-measure each individual block before I add it to the quilt...it's driving me spare. The possibility of a finish before the end of September is ever diminishing. 

Later I noticed that  the first border is not right and I'll have to unpick it again. At about that point I called it a day. (more sobbing and swearing also occurred at this point)

Birthday Snack time was more salt and vinegar chips and some Haighs chocolate oranges. I'm all about healthy eating most of the time ( excuse me while I roll around on the floor laughing) but on a birthday weekend I just let it all hang out.

Mr. P gave me the coolest gift ever for my birthday. Its a scale that you pair with an app on your Ipad that walks you through how to make hundreds of cocktails. You choose the one you want from the app, put the glass on the scale and hook it up to your Ipad and it guides you through making the drink by weighing the liquor for you and telling you when to stop pouring, and what to add next  ....pure genius. I had to try it out - twice - to make sure it worked. 

Dinner was spent with my family at a little hotel in the hills not far from my house. It involved more present opening, a couple more cocktails and a lot of laughter with the people I love most. I don't think you can ask for any more than that for a wonderful birthday.  

And there endeth my weekend ...it was perfect. 

Favourite Things Friday

Twenty one years ago tonight I crept down to the hospital nursery to stare at my beautiful daughter in her humidity crib and marvelled that I had made something so tiny and perfect.  Even if she had made me sick for 8 entire months every single day and had prevented me from eating cheese for my entire pregnancy. The trade off was that she liked strawberries and chocolate milk so that's what I ate for 9 months. 

Between the ages of 14 - 18 I wanted wild gypsies to come and take her away in the middle of the night and return her again after she'd learned to be a human , but for the majority of the last 21 years I have been utterly , deeply and madly in love with her. So I want you all to indulge me today while we celebrate Chloe's 21st birthday because there have been times when I was pretty sure one of us wasn't going to survive to celebrate this rather large milestone. Having done so is my favourite thing this week. 

I'm resisting the urge to show naked baby shots and all the other embarrassments of her life (gawky pre-teen years , bad fashion mistakes, and all those shots of her scowling and looking rebellious and emo through her teen years ). It would be fun for me to play "lets stick all those incriminating photos on the internet" but if I do it today it'll lessen the impact when I do it next Saturday night at her party in front of people she actually knows. Sometimes you have to chose the greater of two evils.   

My life has taken a few twists and turns since that night in the nursery , many of them unexpected.  There really has been joy , and sorrow and challenges and jubilation. There has been happiness and anger, frustration and emotional highs and finally, over the last few years, a relationship based on us both being adults. (which doesn't mean I can tell her what to do occasionally because I am after all, her mother - and dammit Chloe you will listen to me because I know what I'm talking about ) 

Her Royal Highness  started the day by telling me I wasn't allowed to take any pictures of her until she had showered , dressed, slapped on make up and done her hair. Yep- she's always been a princess.

It isnt a birthday without balloons 

And flowers 

We went out for lunch 

Someone over indulged on the baby cinos...

Presents were unwrapped 

Cocktails were enjoyed 

And my cupcakes weren't a total disaster. 

So Chloe I just want you to know ...I love you once,  love you twice, love you more than beans and rice. 

XXX 

Oh and I was totally bullshitting about not showing nudey/ embarrassing shots of you . I have another set lined up for next weekend. 

Feel free to link up and show your embarrassing baby pictures or anything else you like this week too. 

To all of you who have emailed me this week offering your good wishes for my surgery obsessed family, my Dad is fine and Little P sailed through his surgery and woke this morning to wreak havoc through my house as usual. Thank you so much for your lovely emails. 

War Stories

Nineteen years ago today at 1.55 pm, my daughter was born.Whacked out of my head on Pethidine , (how GREAT is that stuff?) I didn't realise how close she came to not being round until  4 days later when a nurse decided to enlighten me. Thanks Nurse. I didn't sleep again until about 1993.

I never did ask how many stitches I had. All I know is that the doc spent a LOT of time in my nether-bits doing something. Again I blame the pethidine. Normally if a guy I've only known for an hour is poking round my privates I'm  asking pointed questions and insisting he at least  buy me dinner first. Eventually my mother , who is usually the soul of tact , (unlike her daughter) said "What are you doing down there....sewing a patchwork quilt?" That I do recall with abundant clarity despite the drugs. Good one Patty.

At one point they  tucked something back in there ... I've always been convinced whatever it was never ended up back in the place it fell out of. Heck, I don't even know what it was. For all I know it could have been my tonsils.  I just know my stomach has never looked remotely the same since.

Being a parent is the most enduring relationship I've ever had. It's been full of love, frustrating , amazing,  exhausting, emotional, challenging  and incredible. Often all in the same 24 hour period. And that was just yesterday.

There are so many platitudes to describe parenting. "Time goes by so fast " "They're only young for such a short time" Enjoy it while it lasts". Each age has something great about it , and something less great about it. Enjoy each bit because when you get to this end it feels like it was done on the blink of an eye.

So Happy Birthday Miss Pyjamas, you've certainly made the ride exciting, and  never dull. Love you once, love you twice, love you more than.......

P.S. By the way someone once told me if you google "google" google explodes. Not true ..I just did it. We're all still here.

P.P.S Oh and I hate my new photo editing program. The rest of my computer completely kicks arse.

P.P.P.S I was writing this post 5 hours ago when Little Pyjamas decided he wanted to experience his first trip to the hospital  (on his mothers birthday no less- this kid is going to be as much of an attention seeker as his mum....sigh) henceforth the reason it's actually being posted on the third not the second as it should have been. And maybe that was my punishment for googling google!