Last week my baby girl turned 5! I know on parenting bingo, it would be one of the top phrases, along with “Where are your shoes?” and “Do you need the toilet?!”, but, seriously,  “Where does the time go?!”  How is she possibly half a decade old already?!  So, I added birthday party stress to the usual chaos and this is how it went down:

Monday:

We left Brisbane to drive to my friend’s on the Coast, deciding we would stop for breakfast on the way.  I saw a sign for Wild Horse Mountain lookout, which sounded intriguing, so thought we would just get sausage rolls from the servo and eat them with a view.  Unfortunately, you could no longer drive to the top and the sign said it was a 700m climb, which was not received well by Grumpy Husband, who chose to fester in the car, whilst we dawdled up.  We thought it was worth it, as the view was stunning, but GH was sending the following texts, so we had to get a bit of a wriggle on!??

While we were at the top, I rang my doctor at the fertility clinic to tell him about the wasted sperm debacle and he was infuriated! Apparently he had had issues with the Toowoomba clinic before and asked if we could come to Brisbane to give a sample in the next few days. Unfortunately, I told him, the timing was out this week, as we were going to the Coast for a few days and then we were going to be working and occupied with the party, so we agreed to try again the following week.

The view from Wild Horse Mountain lookout!

It was so nice to catch up with my friend, see how much her boys have grown and get to the beach! The temperature difference between Toowoomba and the Sunny Coast was a good 6 degrees and the wind chill factor in Toowoomba is always the worst part, so it felt like we were in a different country! And so good to get away from it all and have a change of scenery!

We were planning on a night out on the Tuesday, so decided we would just cook some nice food and have a few quiet drinks on the Monday.  Well, best laid plans and all that…as our friends in Brisbane were moving back to the U.K., they had donated their booze collection to us as they wouldn’t have time to drink it, which consisted of an entire bag of miniatures.  Well, we were like kids in a sweet shop! Once the actual kids were in bed, the tequila shots started and it all went downhill from there.  Ian flaked early and went to sleep in Mia’s bed and Bec and I put the world to rights over way too many spirit combinations!?

A quiet night in!

Tuesday:

I groggily awoke to the sound of an electric car trundling down the hall and a little boy shouting “EARS!” Bec’s little 2 year old can’t say Ian yet and it comes out as “Ears”, which is clearly much funnier for everyone else!  My fertility app reminded me that I hadn’t entered my data for yesterday (it is so ironic that everyone tells you to stop thinking about it so much and it will happen, yet you have to enter every detail into these apps, so it’s impossible NOT to think about it!).  Not that I should probably pay too much attention to it, as my cycle is currently highly irregular, but my app said “We suggest you have intercourse today.” Who am I to argue with pseudoscience?! Having calculated, rather than spontaneous sex, is probably the least sexy thing in the world and I am sure it is only going to get worse once the clinical trial starts, if we can ever get Ian’s swimmers to the clinic to start it that is, and GH has wailed that he feels used when I shout “Come on! The app says it’s time!” but this morning was pretty funny, if decidedly unromantic, while we were keeping one ear out for “EARS” and footsteps and one on the job at hand!??

Mia and I went to meet another friend in a different town and dropped Ian and his fishing gear off at the beach, so that he could have a relaxing afternoon.  We were buttering him up so that he would perhaps offer to put the kids to bed later, while we went out for drinks, you know, seeing as we had had such a quiet night the evening before!?

I returned a couple of hours later to a distraught Ian, who had had his phone stolen from his bag whilst he had been fishing! He had scoured the beach but there was no sign of it! Just what we needed! We rushed back to get ready as we had booked into a quiz night and dinner in Mooloolaba with Bec’s Mum and sister, but once there, Ian was back to Grumpy Husband after the phone incident, the kids were over-tired and Mia smashed a full glass of cordial all over the floor of the bar, so it was definitely time for them to leave!  Ian had agreed to put the kids to bed, despite Bec’s Mum offering, but I knew he wasn’t that happy about it and had just agreed to save face! Ah well, we had a quiz to win! It was a good job the kids had left as it was most definitely an adult-style quiz!  Bec’s Mum is hilarious and definitely younger than her years, but her exclaiming “What’s teabagging?!” made me crease double! Still, when it came to the art round and we were asked to draw the quizmaster’s penis, she did a stellar job!?

We had a great night: I met a girl called Emma from Nottingham (we are so common!!!) we played Cards Against Humanity and we drank way too much, but when the bar is closing and they have stopped politely asking you to leave, it is time to take a not-so-subtle hint! We had issues getting an Uber because both of our cards declined(!), but then I remembered from somewhere in the fog, that my card had expired, so tried really hard with a drunken squint to key in my credit card details and got it right on the third attempt! Hooray!

We took Bec’s sister home with us as well for a game of pool, Bec went straight to put some tunes on and we decided in our drunken wisdom that we should drink some more of the miniatures! In my defence, I was very conscious of the noise level and kept turning the volume down, as I knew Ian and the kids were sleeping, but from the look on his face when he stormed into the kitchen, I don’t think I did the best job!? After one game of pool, I decided to call it a night to avoid further GH intervention!

Wednesday:

I woke up dressed in last night’s clothes and a full face of makeup – always the sign of a good night! GH wasn’t speaking to me.?

We drove home mostly in silence and I morosely watched the temperature gauge decline as we got closer to Toowoomba.  To add insult to injury, there was a huge thunderstorm to drive through for the last half an hour! Welcome home!?

Thursday:

Got an early morning text from Bec to say that Ian had left his shoes there, which is actually his party trick. It must be something to do with growing up with no shoes in Cape York, but the number of places he has left his shoes behind at is ridiculous!

I had decided to book Mia in for holiday play, as she had missed her days earlier in the week and I hadn’t bought a single birthday present yet! She got up pretty late and I had let her sleep as she clearly needed it. She repaid me by emptying half a bottle of shampoo on her head when she was meant to be cleaning her teeth! Why? Because she had decided that was a good time to wash her hair of course! When she was already dressed and almost ready to leave! Aargh!  I grabbed my can of dry shampoo as I didn’t have time to wash it all out, sprayed and tied it back, looking a little extra slick than usual!?

I had received a message from Mia’s party venue asking for a final confirmation of numbers and gender split and I was still waiting for a reply from two kindy parents, so enlisted the help of Mia’s teacher, as I didn’t know the parents of either child.  I left the guest list completely down to Mia this year, even though personally I would rather pick kids of my friends!  What has happened to party etiquette though?! Is it really that hard to RSVP in the days when you only have to text a mobile number?! The teacher was pretty speedy in getting back to me: one was a yes and one was a no. So I wonder when the no was going to let me know?! When she didn’t turn up? It is slightly more acceptable, though still pretty rude, when it’s a casual park or house party, but when it’s a venue which is strict on numbers and charges per head, it’s a different story! Luckily I had a little boy in mind, whose party Mia had attended the previous weekend, so problem solved.  But still, grrrr!?

After doing a mountain of laundry and tidying, I didn’t have time to get to the shops before my tutoring session, so decided to go late night shopping instead.  We had decided to get Mia a swing set as her big present, but every shop seemed to be out of stock and I couldn’t contact Ian to decide on an alternative – how the hell did we exist pre-mobile phones? So I just chose a random selection of toys, loaded them into my trolley and ordered her balloons.  Opened my wallet to pay…no credit card! Damn it! It was still in my going out handbag from Tuesday and no debit card because it had expired = no form of payment!!!!? Explained the situation, had to book my trolley into lay-by at customer services and drive home to pick up my credit card! Told Ian he would have to make dinner as it was going to be a late one now and got a grunt response, which was progress from not speaking to me earlier.

I drove all the way back to the shops, paid for my toys and then remembered I needed to get Mia a party dress!  I traipsed around a good few shops without seeing anything suitable, had got a couple of cute ones in Target and then went into H&M and found 4 more gorgeous ones! On a good day, I probably would have taken the first ones back, but I was delirious by this point and told myself I would  keep the receipts and take back the ones she didn’t like.  Because little girls usually dislike party dresses, don’t they?!

By the time I got home, Mia was already in bed and Ian had retired to the bedroom, so I heated up dinner and had started the washing up, when a mahoosive (no exaggeration!) cockroach ran across the wall and then I’m sure it saw me and stopped!  We were both frozen in fear.  I caved first and ran to the bedroom to try to get Ian to save his damsel in distress.  He had switched the light off, but couldn’t possibly be asleep yet!  He told me to go away in no uncertain terms, but I kept on nagging, culminating in throwing his work boot at his bed lump in an act of desperation! He got up, fuming, and….it had bloody disappeared! The big sneaky cockroach!  But where did it go?! I ran to shut the bedroom door in case it had snuck in during the pandemonium, but it couldn’t be found.  GH, very red of face, didn’t even believe it existed and told me he would get me back for waking him up! Der der der! (Dramatic music if you were unsure!)

Friday:

GH unceremoniously woke me up by switching the lights on and stealing the covers at 5:45am.  If that was getting me back, I wouldn’t tell him that my alarm was set for 6 anyway! Mwah ha ha!  He got sent home from work due to the torrential downpour, so we could irritate each other in a small vicinity all day long! Mia was at holiday play and I had earmarked the day for cleaning the house ready for our guests coming to stay and birthday weekend!

Ian had to go to the police station to report his missing phone for the insurance company, only to be told that there was nobody there to deal with it and to sort it over the phone, which is what he had tried to do in the first place!?

I couldn’t find my wallet, but had had it in H&M, which was the last shop I went in, so after calling the shop, the shopping centre and pulling the house apart, I was relieved to finally find it in the bottom of a shopping bag! It had clearly seemed like a good place to put it late on Thursday night! A very productive morning, I’m sure you will all agree!

The rest of the day was a cleaning blur, punctuated by my work colleague bringing over the most amazing big top birthday cake for Mia’s circus themed party!

Big top cake!

Then after she was tucked up in bed, I started the mammoth task of wrapping her presents and setting up for the morning, finishing just before the stroke of midnight!?

5th birthday ready!

Saturday:

Mia had decided she wanted to start her birthday off by doing parkrun.  Yes, really!  I think it was more about getting her name in chalk and chocolate waffles afterwards that she wanted, but she follows me in not being a morning person, so I had to wake her up, get her dressed half asleep and bundle her into the car, which is nobody’s ideal way of starting their birthday!  She hadn’t even had time to see her presents!

True to form, she had had enough by the end of the first lap, so thankfully there were some enthusiastic runners who were willing to piggyback her for most of the second lap!  Which is technically cheating, but we’ll let it go! We found her Birthday chalk message for a pic and ate her chocolate waffles and all was well until the waiter brought her a cookie with a sparkler, so we could sing Happy Birthday and Mia dived off her chair, as she has an irrational fear of sparklers, possibly started by me telling her stories of kids losing eyes due to sparklers on Bonfire night! Well that’s what we had to watch on adverts as kids as a warning! ?

Parkrun piggybacks!

Her name in chalk!

Scary sparkler!

We got home and opened her haul of presents and were then getting ready for her party when Ian came in to show me a redback spider he had found on his work boot!!!  I sincerely hope this was the only one and that it had hitched a ride from a long way out of town!

Redback spider!?

I had won this birthday party for Mia several months earlier in a competition where I had to write about “a time when your child has embarrassed you in public!” If ever a competition was made for me… I was a little nervous of how it was going to pan out however.  We had had tears over the guest list, as the children had to be over 4 years old and Mia has a good number of younger friends and also because she could only invite 11 guests, which is quite a small number to choose.  It was also a “drop off and leave” party, which was the first one I had taken her to and I wanted to stay and be a part of it!

I was whittling about getting the cake there and setting up, so I went first and Ian was bringing Mia later. The party venue is in a strange place in an industrial area of town, so after wrestling with tying a helium clown face to the gate in strong winds, I decided to stand at the entrance and wave to cars instead! Well, the guests were arriving and there was no sign of Ian and Mia, so I was beginning to panic.  It turns out that he had got lost and obviously had no phone to ring me, but panic over, she was there in the nick of time!

It was actually a fantastic party and the host was brilliant! It was a circus disco party, complete with craft activities, dress ups, dance floor, karaoke, games, an amazing spread of food and best of all, she took all the photos for me!  One parent got ridiculously lost and didn’t turn up until halfway through, I didn’t know some of the Mum’s names and it had passed the appropriate time to ask and I got yelled at to “Go out, Mummy! None of the other Mummies are here!” when I tried to pop my head in, but other than that it was a great success!

Our friends from Brisbane came as it was their last weekend in Australia and we managed to talk them into staying over so we could have a few farewell drinks together.  Well we all know how a few drinks pans out…I didn’t actually drink very much, but in the excitement of the day, I hadn’t really eaten much either, so when I went to bed I was transported back to teenage drunkenness and the room started spinning! I put my foot down on the floor in an attempt to steady myself, but it didn’t work and the next minute I was dashing to the bathroom and decorating the sink!?

 Sunday:

Ugh! Hangover hell!  I ventured out of bed to see everyone and they all seemed surprised at the state of me!  Ian hadn’t even realised I’d been running to the bathroom and he’d been next to me and the others said I hadn’t seemed that bad, if overly talkative (nothing new really!)! Apparently I’d been begging everyone not to go to bed and to “stay up and talk to me!!!” so it was probably good that I went to bed when I did to avoid further embarrassment!

Today was “Cupcakes in the park” for all the friends who couldn’t come yesterday, but it wasn’t until 2pm, so after a sad goodbye to our friends, I went back to bed for a few hours, in an attempt to be presentable later!

It was a lovely afternoon, but in the effort to be sociable, I completely forgot to take any photos until the last half an hour! I did get some good ones when Mia’s helium 5 balloon flew off though and all the kids stood and pointed!?

What are they pointing at?!

Just the 5 balloon casually making its escape!

We were very lucky to get dry weather, but it was a little nippy and GH gave me several hints to start packing up, which I blatantly ignored!  Eventually he came and interrupted my conversation by saying “I’m leaving in 10 seconds! If you’re not in the car, I’m going without you!”?

“Oooookaaaay…sorry friends that have turned up for my daughter’s birthday, but I have to go now!!! Thanks so much for coming though!”  A slightly embarrassing end, but hopefully they understand grumpy husbands!

All in all, it was an amazing week and a fabulous birthday weekend, but exhausted is an understatement!? Hopefully the next week would be calmer!  I’m pretty sure I say this every Sunday….