Better late than never

I didn't make it back to blog yesterday - subsided into bed exhausted at 9.20pm!

So, back to the birthday girl. She is of course an absolute beacon of joy in our lives - she is extremely funny, extraordinarily clever and quite amazingly beautiful in our eyes at least. I used to wonder whether watching a second child (and another girl) grow up and develop would be a bit boring, having already watched the first with those astonished newbie-parent eyes, but no, not a bit of it. Watching Shannon grow in some ways that are similar but some ways that are totally different from Jade is just as enchanting the second time around. And I particularly adore this 'learning to talk' stage, when language is just developing and their little individual interpretations of words mean that only a parent can understand a lot of what is said. I love Shannon's "Dair-DENN" (shouted!) which means 'again', and the way she calls her sister "Dabdid" or "Dadid", although I would not mind hearing an awful lot less of "u-miwk" which has recently turned into "mu-mee-miwk" or "hungry" which is not satisfied by food but only by boob . I swear that girl sometimes asks (and gets!) said substance about 10 times an hour, as refusal brings on wailing, sobbing, clinging to my legs and general heartbreak all round. No wonder she's somewhere round the 99th percentile for weight!

Anyway, as far as early predictions of her future are concerned, I would currently suggest she will either end up as a comedian or a musician as she seems to have a definite talent for both, so it will be interesting to look back in 20 or 30 years and wonder with astonishment how on earth she turned into an accountant!

Birthday celebrations were low-key. We had a lazy morning when she enjoyed learning about opening presents and enjoying the contents! In the afternoon we went to an HE session organised by the woman who I met a couple of weeks ago with the stunning house! It was at her local village hall and she had invited several other HE families for a clay/pottery session with clay, wheel and tuition provided by a local potter. I hadn't met any of these other families before as she is in the totally opposite direction to the other group that I have been attending, so it was lovely to meet a whole new group of HErs (all Christians although there weren't any distinguishing features from any other HE get-together to make it obvious!!!) and a whole new bunch of kids! She is hoping to arrange get-togethers every so often so that'll be great. She was kind enough to organise a birthday cake complete with candles for Shannon and a large group rendition of 'Happy Birthday' to go with it. Jade declined to make anything recognisable from her lump of clay, so after fiddling about a bit making the letters for her name which she then destroyed I made a birthday cake with 2 candles for Shannon and, on request, a person (head, body, legs but no arms!) for Jade. Jade then had a go on the potter's wheel and 'made' a vase (with some help!) but predictably refused to utter a single word or even nod or shake her head in response to any questions from the man so that felt slightly embarrassing although I should not take it that way, I know. Shannon spent the time mostly completely engrossed in playing with the toy kitchen but unfortunately (fortunately?) we do not have the space for any such kind of thing in this house so she'll just have to enjoy them elsewhere.

Afterwards, seeing as we were three-quarters of the way to my Dad's house, we continued on there where DH met us and we had a birthday tea complete with yet another scrummy birthday cake and candles. Shannon made a sort of 'Fff-Ffff' attempt at blowing out the candles but didn't get on too well so we all helped! But that was all lovely and quite fitting as Jade had had her second birthday at her other grandparents' house in the north-east so it was kind of nice to continue the tradition.

Sadly, being 2 hasn't diminished Shannon's desire for mummymilk in the night although we are down to about 2 wakings per night rather than 5 or 6. Not enough of an improvement yet to bring about a vast change in the amount of my daytime fog or sleepiness so that's still something to work on. Hence my early collapse last night!