Big Birthday Excitement

Yesterday was my thirty-third birthday. Thirty-three isn't a very interesting number, but it's one of the ones you have to get through on the way to ooooold.

Blake's first present to me was to tell the girls not to fight on my birthday. If you know any two- and five-year-old sisters you will know how long that lasted, but they did try. For at least an hour. The next nice thing was that Blake let me languish in bed while he went downstairs with the girls and made tea and toast for me.

After breakfast we opened presents: Delphine got me a strand of blue silk flowers and beads on a wire, to decorate things with. Cordelia got me a wire and bead ladybug (and then broke it, but not fatally), and Blake got me a Moleskine notebook for Writing Things Down In. I loved everything. Blake thought I might not like the girls' things because of their tchotchke-like nature, but it's surprising how much I completely adore them just because my girlies picked them out. I put the blue flower garland on the banister and I put the ladybug... well, I put it up high. Hopefully I can put it somewhere else soon.

Despite it being my birthday we still had a million errands to run (partly because we're going to Sask next week) but I had a nice time. I spent far too much money on clothes for Delphine (but they were on sale! And so cute!) and far too much money on a present for my cousin. We met up with our friends Tanya and Ursa and continued the tradition started last year of decorating cupcakes (which is to say, burying them in as many sprinkles as they will hold). Tanya and I got some very rare talking-together-like-grownups time while the little ones slept and the five-year-olds played with Playmobil.

After Tanya and Ursa left, Blake came home with KFC (my annual treat) and more presents! A beautiful Basil pannier and the Torchwood season one DVD! He tried to get the latter signed, but I'm glad he didn't manage it because I would have died of jealousy if he had met John Barrowman without me. Well, maybe not died, quite.

Then more company; Kat came over and watched our TV while the children were in bed, and we went for a walk and had coffee. We came home, watched the first episode of Torchwood (I think we may have converted Kat) and went to bed.

All in all, a super birthday, but my first full day of being thirty-three was fabulous too. Kat stayed over and we went to yoga together in the morning. Yoga was fun, as usual, but my hamstrings are astonishingly tight and there were some postures I couldn't even consider. As usual, though, yoga threw me some ego-boosting soft pitches: I can balance! I can ... well, mainly I can balance! But there's a lot of that in yoga! The thing I like about yoga is that you might try a posture one minute that seems completely impossible — you look at the person next to you and wonder if perhaps there is some optical illusion involved — but the very next posture is something you can not only do, but do the "if you want a little more challenge" variation! Yoga wants you to feel good.

But the best thing of all was that today Delphine learned how to ride a bike! She went off with Blake to practice riding in the school ground, and when they got back she was riding all by herself. I could hardly believe my eyes! This summer has been great for her; she learned to climb a tree, she is reading (not entire books but words and phrases), and now riding a bike. Wow!