What 35 looks like.

Today is Marcus's birthday and if I were him I'd totally demand a do over. You know how your birthday is supposed to be the one day all year where you get a sleep in, totally spoilt, and it's all about you. Well, our family never got that memo.  

Oliver had the right idea but not the skills to execute when he rose at 5 and attempted to make Marcus breakfast in bed. I came downstairs to find this, and no that's not banana but pretty much half a tub of margarine on that slice of toast followed by the same amount of peanut butter. I'm glad I discovered him before he attempted to do the cereal bowls.

Nathan has had a high temperature for the last 3 days and has been miserable. If he was awake he was screaming, regardless of what we did. We ended up taking him to A&E (the whole family in tow) to get him checked over to make sure it wasn't anything more serious. Just a virus the Doctor said and to keep up the pain relief.

It's the Triple Peaks challenge this weekend and selfishly I kept ducking away this morning to try and catch some friends I was supporting at the various check points, promising Marcus that the afternoon would be all about him. We had some vouchers I had been saving up to go to the hot pools in Napier followed by dinner at the restaurant across the road. These plans had to be canned because Nathan was just too sick and miserable to go anywhere and about 2pm  I crawled into bed with a headache and sore throat.

Lucy and Oliver however pumped up on fizzy drinks and lollipops given to them at the A&E to keep them quiet and happy have been bouncing off the walls with energy and their usual "LOOK AT ME" "PLAY WITH ME!"  "FEED ME!" "ENTERTAIN ME!" demands. They don't care that their younger brother is trying to sleep in the end bedroom or that their mum isn't feeling so hot, or that it's their Dad's birthday. Thank goodness for grandparents up the road where we sent them up for errands three times today, just in an attempt to wear them out a little.

This is them at bath time, having discovered the dust masks from our emergency kit that had to be raided today for medicine. Lucy has tied up her legs with dust masks. She is nothing but original.

So if I were Marcus I'd be pretty gutted with how my birthday played out. Lucky for all of us, I am not Marcus. The real Marcus has been amazing.  He has made me coffees in his new cups he got as  birthday present, he baked cupcakes with the kids, he took Nate for walks in the pram when the screaming just got too much, He cracked jokes, made us all laugh, and not once complained about the day being pretty much the worst one we've had all year. He even played around and put some video footage we took of the kids to music. When he showed me he said "it's a snapshot of this time in our lives for us to remember" and I looked at him like he was crazy "why on earth will we want to remember this? " I said, but he was right,  take out the noise, insert a cool tune instead and our kids almost pass as cute. Perhaps I can just live out the rest of this season with earphones and happy music playing on in the background.

He is 35. I know he feels every one of those years but I wouldn't want to do this parenting thing with anyone else. He is nothing short of amazing and despite it all, STILL doesn't have one grey hair to show for it. Happy Birthday Babe. You're a rock star.