Flutterbymama

Lucas’s 4th birthday!!! (Yup a tad late)

But better late than never I always say. And believe me I’m nearly always late…even the boy was late!

The boy was born shortly before 6 in the morning on Sat 9th June 2007. It was a fairly straight forward birth. Into labour about 11pm Friday night and, although the midwife said it would be at least another 12 hours before I needed to come in, I was in hospital by 4am. Have some rest and try and sleep she said… yeah right! I had no idea that he was coming so fast but boy am I glad he did. Within a couple of hours I had him in my arms and we were overjoyed. Most of it was a gas and air blur and I saw baked beans on the ceiling and traffic lights changing from red to green but it was an amazing experience. It’s true what they say about the pain fading from memory to some degree. The midwife who delivered my bundle said I could probably be home by lunch! Fab I thought. Then it started…

I made a decision, mainly because I brick it if you come anywhere near me with a ruddy needle, to not have an epidural or the needle in the thigh to speed up the placenta removal. I had a brilliant water birth in a small local midwife run unit and I would do it all over again. The problems came whilst waiting for the placenta to come away. It never happened. So in the needle went to help it on it’s way. Still nothing. It was like trying to give birth all over again but this time it was painful. Sorry for those who are squeamish, they pulled on the cord, I pushed, nothing! After a couple of hours they called the larger local hospital as I had to be transferred so they could do a removal procedure in theatre. All pretty intense and I’m so glad my mum was there. She turned up from work just after Lucas was born. Thanks mum I can’t thank you enough for what you did that day. So long story short… they tried again to pull it out and then I heard a pop, yay it’s out no need for surgery. No it turns out they snapped the ruddy cord off the placenta. So spinal block and manual removal it is… woohoo. I’ve never been so effing scared in my life. Procedure went well but felt pretty shit as had no sleep since the previous morning, hadn’t fed Lucas and my poor hub thought he was going to lose me. It all sounds pretty dramatic but remember I was on gas and air throughout most of this so I was non the bloody wiser half the time. Very surreal experience. Not something I want to re-live but there is a high chance of it happening again if we decided to have another child. The moral of this story is that we are all safe and sound and happy and that that was just a small blip in our lives which we’ve had to come to terms with.

The last 4 years have been filled with lots of fun and laughter and I wouldn’t change anything as my little boy is just brilliant and funny. We celebrated his 1st birthday with a big party with practically everyone we know and he had chickenpox.

His 2nd birthday was spent at Chester Zoo just the 3 of us and his 3rd birthday was home made pizza at home with the grandparents. As this is the last birthday before he starts school we thought we should go all out. Once he gets to school we have no say in who he invites to parties and it seems tradition to have them in these horrific play centres that I hate so much. We wanted it to be special and as we have a large enough garden we thought we’d have it at home with a few of Lucas’s close friends and their parents. Luckily the parents are nearly all friends of ours so it made for a nice day for all of us.

First things first, we had to decide on a theme. Lucas liked the idea of monsters. He also wanted a dragster too, so a monster dragster party it was. That’s, almost 4 year old’s, for you. The hub designed the invite and did a wonderful job. Then we had to plan the food and activities. We scoured the internet and found some great ideas. We wanted the majority of it to be made by us and not bought.

Delicious butties, ham and honey mustard, chicken and sweet chilli chicken & Lancs cheese & chutney

Choc dipped breadsticks (some with sprinkles)…in the fridge to set

Smartie topped, choc dipped marshmallows…don’t think I even got one!

The hub making jam thumb print biccies…late into the night

Unfortunately by the time the food was ready I was so busy I forgot to take a photo before it all went and believe me it ALL went. I didn’t want dishes filled with sweeties and wotsits and the like so we had to think of interesting things to eat for kids. We had rainbow fruit kebabs drizzled in melted chocolate, breadsticks dipped in chocolate and sprinkles, marshamallows with a bit of chocolate topped with a smarties, homemade pizzas, homemade jam thumb print biscuits, cheese and ham on bread or rolled wraps for the kids and lovely deli baguettes for the grown ups, tyrells plain kettle chips, bowl of strawberries & veggies and dips. We were up till late the night before and up early in the morning. I made the cake late at night and really glad I did as it was lovely and a great success. I borrowed the idea from the internet which was a rainbow layered cake. As I only had one cake tin of the same size I had to bake each one individually so I only managed 4 layers otherwise I would have been up all night! I just used a simple sponge recipe and added colours, then melted a bar of chocolate and spread it all over and topped it off with a pack of smarties.

The cake…oh so proud

The colourful party bags…took an age to source these

Monster softies…handmade by moi

On the theme of making it all ourselves I wanted fun gift bags so decided to make my own handmade monsters. They went down a treat. The kids were really happy as they thought I’d made each one specifically for each of them. I wish…first time making anything like this and I was 90% happy with them but would change how I did some if I did more.

The next thing we had to organise was games. I’m not good at this sort of thing so again we scoured the internet and got some ideas. Pin the tail on the donkey… my hub already had the idea of stick the eyes on the monster. More web scouring found us a bean bag game with a monster mouth, so using an old computer box, we designed and stuck it on a large opening for the mouth and got some soft round monster water squirters to use to throw in. We found some monster stomp feet and used those for racing and we had pass the eyeball with wrapping paper again designed by my hub.

Stick the eyes on the monster…who needs a donkey?!

Chuck the ball in the monsters mouth…this had much use as gave it to nursery after the party

Monster stomp!!!!

My great friend Moraen did face painting bless her..thank you you’re a star!

And what more do you really need than a trampoline?

We wanted the kids to be able to do some of the activites with their parents as and when they felt like it rather than us having to be on the ball and running around making the entertainment, so prizes were all placed in a big basket and could be collected when anyone had completed a game. It all worked out really well and Lucas loved his cake especially when we cut into it. Everybody had a great time and stayed way past the 3pm slot we gave. We were lucky with the sunshine so we could all be outside and we borrowed 2 large gazebos from the next door neighbours so we had cover if needed.

It’s certainly a day I will never forget and I hope Lucas remembers it always. Not sure I would be in a hurry to do it again soon but it sure beats chicken nuggets and chips at an overcrowded, ship ‘em in ship ‘em out play centre. Problem is we’ve set the bar now so we’ll have to get our thinking caps on for next year !

Monsters made by Sophie his cousin. We strung them together and made bunting…beautiful

Lucas and his best friend Aoifa at the end of the day

Aoifa, her sister Mali and mum Moraen & dad Rick stayed till after midnight! The kids went to sleep in our bed…it was a full on but fun day and the boy had so much fun and he was really good about not winning games. Maybe that was down to the treat bowl which had little gifts in it that the kids could take a prize if they did a game by themselves or with an adult. Well whatever it was, it worked and everybody had a great day. Thankyou to all our friends.