November 4, 2009

Well, it's my Charlie-boy's birthday tomorrow. I can hardly believe he'll be six.
He's pretty excited, and has been watching the pile of presents grow on the dresser over the past few days every time the postman has been.
(He's nothing like his mother though, because other than counting them periodically, he's left them completely alone and hasn't done any squeezing, prodding or shaking!)

He's at school tomorrow, of course, and he's got a pile of fairy cakes to take in for his classmates. We've got him a badge with a dalek and a big number six on it, and another special 'Birthday Boy' badge from Nanny to wear on his school jumper (but he doesn't know that yet, so don't tell him!)

We're picking him up after school and heading straight to Nanny's for birthday tea and cake and presents! We've got a few sparklers to have in the back garden, and Charlie's really looking forward to it.

He's chosen a rather spectacular dinosaur cake for tomorrow, and I'm making a dalek cake (yes, another one!) for his party on Saturday.

We're only having a very low-key party for him this year - just a few kids from school at the house, with some games. Weather permitting, Pete's hoping to set off a few fireworks in the garden, so the children can sit in the conservatory to watch. (All the fun, but none of the danger... except for Pete, and he's big enough to look after himself!)

My sister-in-law is going to bring Mum to the house for the party, which is lovely. As I said, it's only going to be low-key, so Mum can just disappear into the kitchen if it all gets a bit much.

Charlie is so thrilled that Nanny is going to come to his party, although I have no doubt that there's going to be a pretty enormous Dad-sized hole in the proceedings.

Charlie was talking this morning about his party last year - we had some helium balloons which he inadvertently let go into the roof of the hall.

Dad, being Dad, found a huge length of wood, and wound a load of sticky tape around the end so he could fetch the balloons back down for Charlie.

Chas was remembering this, and said 'Grandpa was really clever, wasn't he Mum?'
When I agreed, he said 'I hope I'm like Grandpa when I grow up.'

Me too, Chas. Me too.

But if there's one thing I know for sure, it's that Dad wouldn't want me to cancel Charlie's birthday on his account.

So, on we go. It does feel strange, and I must admit I feel like I'm functioning in a bit of a fog at the moment, and just putting one foot in front of the other like some sort of machine.

I know at some point, everything will catch up with me and hit me like a ton of bricks, but I'll deal with that when I get there.

But for now, I have traffic-light jellies to make, and a dalek cake to put together.

I must away to wrap Charlie's presents, but I'll leave you with something Charlie said this morning.

We were chatting about Grandpa, and how wonderful Heaven must be - there's no crying, no pain, and now Grandpa is in Heaven, he doesn't have cancer any more, and he can do all the things the cancer stopped him doing, and how everything must be so perfect... to which Charlie responded: 'Well, I hope it'll be ok for them to have some broken things up there, because you know how much Grandpa likes mending things.'

I had to smile.

Dad would have laughed out loud.