No signs of triskaidekaphobia or indeed friggatriskaidekaphobia on Friday 13th March 2015, for this auspicious day saw our son celebrate his second birthday. Ezra was born on the 13th March 2013 weighing 8lb 13oz, with all those 13’s there is no way he can be superstitious about that prime integer. Not that at two years old he has any inkling of the nature of superstitions or indeed that it is even his birthday. There is no doubt he will get used to the idea of having a birthday on a Friday 13th, indeed he only has to wait for 5 years and 2020 for it to happen again.
Unfortunately I was unable to take the day off work and both Éowyn and Amélie were at school, Ezra spent the majority of his birthday with his mum, but even his mum wasn’t able to spend the full day with him. This is because she has an even more pressing arrangement: an invitation to Éowyn’s Mother’s Day concert at school. Therefore while Lucinda spent an hour at a concert in her honour Nanny came to look after her youngest grandson.
We could not let Ezra’s day pass that easily though, could we? So I left work early arriving back home at 16:00 just in time to look after Amélie and the birthday boy while Lucinda picked up Éowyn and her friend Billy from Spanish after school club. Our neighbour’s boy, Blake, then joined us to make it a little more of a party atmosphere. Yes, they were both ostensibly Éowyn’s friends but both are boys and they know Ezra very well and to be perfectly honest Ezra hasn’t really got any friends.
When you have you first child you join the local N.C.T. club and meet new parents in the same situation, forge friendships and the children naturally become friends. Indeed Blake and Billy are children of friends that we met through our N.C.T. class. This is not the case with the second child, although there some from our N.C.T. group have gone on to have a second child giving Amélie a ready-made friend, but it is certainly not the case with the third. Thus Éowyn has had ready made friends since her birth, Amélie and, even more so, Ezra are going to have to go out into the big wide world and make their own friends.
Éowyn and the boys were a little hyper after a long week at school and so we had to mould that energy into games. Lucinda had set up a treasure trail for them, with clues pointing to the ultimate prize. With a bit of prompting they solved the clues and retrieved there Red-Nose Day related prizes. Yes, not only was Friday 13th March 2015 Ezra’s second birthday it was the 30th anniversary Red-Nose Day, a day that saw them pass the £1,000,000,000 mark.
After a rest for a party meal musical statues and musical bumps were the next focus for their energy with more prizes, this time in the form of sweets and before you knew it Ezra’s party was over. There was just time for him to blow out the 2-shaped candle on his birthday cake before bed and a well-earned rest for Mommy and Daddy.
It was not, however, Ezra’s only birthday party. The weekend prior to his birthday, was an F.A. Cup weekend (although less said about West Bromwich Albion’s performance the better) and as such there was no Premier League football (not strictly true as there was one errant match that had been rescheduled to take advantage of both teams lack of interest in the F.A. Cup). Usually this would mean a weekend off for me, however IMG doesn’t like me taking weekends off. This weekend saw the start of our latest acquisition Major League Soccer. Since this is the start of a contract and not really sure what we were going to get or exactly what we were doing with it, I went in to shepherd the first weekend.
Now for those of you for who the letters MLS or indeed Major League Soccer mean nothing, it is the United States version of the Premier League (although without being too unkind the standard is some way off the latter). So with evening kick-offs on the West Coast of the United States this meant overnights for yours truly. It has been a long time since I have done overnights and although in themselves it wasn’t too bad, I have felt jet-lagged ever since.
Nevertheless this did mean that although the day time was for sleeping, with three little ones this wasn’t going to happen that easily (although I did pretty well on the Saturday), we could do something during the day. Therefore we invited Nanny Fran, Auntie Liz, Auntie Mary, Great Uncle Michael and Great Auntie Yvonne for a celebration of Ezra‘s birthday.
Lucinda’s mum and dad were away for the weekend in the Isle of Wight else we would have made a bigger event, although with hindsight the fact that I had only had 3 hours sleep did start to take its toll and so I was glad there were only 5 guests.
I think Ezra enjoyed being the centre of attention although being the 3rd sibling he wasn’t the centre of attention for that long. His sisters hogged the limelight as much as they could. However, they were not the one getting presents and since it was his party we let him open the presents that we given him. He was very excited with his Peppa Pig Weeble set. As mentioned previously it is his favourite programme (although he insists on calling it Georgie Pig) so having his own Peppa Pig characters that his sisters have to ask him to play with gives him a little more power. He also received some more wooden track and a new train for his train set. Now he can play choo-choos with a bigger tracks and even had points so he can have a second route.
With all the new, boy-related, toys that he received for his birthday the toys that he has taken to bed and played with the most was, somewhat predictably, the cheapest. While buying Ezra’s birthday present Lucinda saw the first edition of a collectible magazine set. With all those collectible magazine sets, the first edition is 99p to entice you in. This magazine set was aimed at young children and was about my favourite subject as a small child, dinosaurs. With the first magazine you received an adult triceratops and a baby tyrannosaurus rex. We thought he might like them but did not foresee the fact that he will not put them down and they would take precedence over his weeble George.
With the advent of Ezra’s second birthday comes the next health care check up. When you have your first child you look in the books and the guidelines to make sure that your little one is meeting all the targets (or in Éowyn’s case exceeding them all), this becomes less important as the second and third come along. Nevertheless when a letter comes from the doctors wanting you to make an appointment to check on your third child’s development you start to look at the list of targets and mentally tick them off.
Ezra is meeting and exceeding them all except the target number of words. By a child’s second birthday they expect them to know 50 words. When we received the letter we though about all the words that Ezra says and could not make it passed thirty. Slightly concerned about this I jokingly said to Ezra that he needed to pull his finger out and start saying a few more words. He has taken that chiding to heart and is seemingly coming out with a new word or two everyday and stringing them together. We haven’t seen the health worker yet but Ezra now knows his fifty words and all is good.
Two days after Ezra’s birthday was Mother’s Day or Mothering Sunday, whichever you prefer. As usual it wasn’t much of a rest for Lucinda as I was at work but, as mentioned above, there was a celebration at Éowyn’s school on the Friday before (Friday 13th, Ezra’s birthday and Red-Nose day – what a busy day). The Mother’s day concert started with songs sung by the children followed by cakes and cup of tea for all the mums. Not exactly relaxing considering everything else that was going on, but it is the thought that counts.
I will leave other family related news to the next update and let Ezra have an update all of his own for his birthday (well, nearly all of his own).
Peace and Love
Baggie
