Connor was invited to a birthday party for Friday morning.  I read the SMS invite and my eyes read 10h30.

Friday at 09h45 I rechecked the SMS to realise it said 10h00.

Flew out the house wearing the stuff you pray no one sees you in.  Screeched off down the road.  Traffic on the N1 was bumper-to-bumper at 09h48 on a Friday morning.

I yelled and screamed, but the traffic did not seem to care.

Roared into the parking area, and because it was that kind of  day, there was no parking and I had to park at the furthest possible entrance to the shopping centre.

Ran through the shopping centre with a 12 year old dragged behind me.  Get to location cannot find party people.  Gate holders seem to have no idea about the party – I think okay, I will just pay for him to go in and then he can join the party — I am sure they are inside there somewhere.

Look in wallet.  No money.  F*ck!

Little hamster in head tries to work out best route through maze.  Decide.  Okay leave Connor at the entrance of the party place – hugely stressful to me, as he is now standing alone inside the biggest mall – really regret our earlier decision not to give him a fully charged cell phone.

Yes, that is working out quite nicely now.

I give him firm instructions to remain in this position and only move if he sees the party group.

I run some more to the other side of the center.  Actually I ran first in the incorrect direction, so it did take twice as long.

Find an ATM – stand in queue.  Bouncing on my toes as you do when you are waiting and wondering if at this exact moment your child is being kidnapped by a man in a vest.

Get to ATM – put card in – hand shaking, either not enough caffeine or too much adrenaline, or too much crack for breakfast.

ATM takes card, does not give money, not a slip of paper, or a f*ck you very much.  Just takes the card and then politely asks for “next customer please.”

The issue now is how long to wait for your card to expelled from the machine or to run and see if you can located your child before a man in a vest whisks him away in a red Toyota Tazz.

After 10 minutes and screaming at the ATM.  I decided if I ran really fast I could collect my child and run to the bank to stop my card before it got spat out of the machine into a person who realises I am still using 12345 as my ATM don’t tell anyone PIN number.

Ran to where I left Connor, he was not there.  Mild sh*t attack.  Hopped from foot to foot and eventually saw him at the party – tried to call child’s-mom-whose-party-it was, she was not answering.

Thought okay, calm down, try and take a breath.  Next plan is to run to bank, stop card, and hopefully they can give me an emergency card, as I had no money and no access to any money without an ATM card.

Running to the bank – good plan to save time.

Inside the bank, it appears to run on a different time line altogether.  I

st00d in the line so long the person who walks down the line to ask you in a helpful voice why you are standing in the queue – who seems like a jolly good idea, but the reality is even if you said your pants were on fire they would smile and nod telling you you are in the right queue.

I really wish banks would understand that checking if clients are in the right queue, is not as effective as say opening another teller window and thus shortening the queue.

After just short of two hours I had received an emergency card and been able to cancel the other cards connected to my accounts so the bank could issue new ones.

By the time I got back to the party place, the party had ended  and the kids had wandered off to a fast food outlet.

There was a bit more of me panicking, phoning the phone that does not get answered, and basically have a total humour failure in the middle of a shopping mall.

Eventually found him.

He had had a great time.

Me?  I was bleeding out of my ears from stress.

But then Connor and I went and had McDonalds together and then I felt a bit better.

{little did I know that this was going to be amateur hour for the shit day it was going to be….}

Isabelle turns 4 on Monday, 10 June 2013.

She is in the running to be my favourite child.

I know people say “I love all my children the same” … yeh, I think you do, but you love them differently.

I have different connections with each of my children, and I like different things about them.

I know I should be “like and sharing” more “if you love your child then like this image” but I am not sure I like them enough all the time to do that.  If I start sharing all that crap on Facebook then I can’t sit here in my cushion of sarcasm and judge other people who do.  It is a little burst of joy I have, please do not rob me of it.

I like it about as much as I like the one where people are telling me how much they love their sexy husbands on Facebook status updates — for the love of gd, get a room, get off Facebo0k, make him a pie or something.

If that shit floats your boat, please carry on as you were …. am I the only one who wants to stab people who like and relike and then share this shit?

But I digress ….. Isabelle is a challenging child.

She is four (on Monday) and her speech is probably that of a 2 and a 1/2 year old.

She can make the sounds, can sound out the alphabet, and the word if you do it with her, but she has an inability to plan a word, so in her hands you end up standing there and not having a clue what she is rattling on about.

We have done speech therapy, and I must be honest, I am not sure it is working.

I am not convinced she would have made the same level of speech progress if just left to get on with it.

I get what she is saying about 70% of the time, the other 30% I am standing there with a furrow in my forehead while she is saying the same thing.  Louder and louder.  And I still have no idea what she wants.

Eventually it results in me yelling: “use your words, I do not know what you want” and her then starting to escalate the demand and scream and cry at the same time.  Usually when I am trying to drive, and she is in the back of the car and wants me to do something.  While I am driving.  It sometimes involves me taking off her shoes.  Just to reiterate I am driving, and she is sitting in the third row of a van …..

Because she struggles to be understood she tends to throw wobblies (a nice word for going off her fkn face in the kitchen) because she wants something.

She knows what it is, and is screaming it at us, and we are standing there handing her the tomato sauce, a spoon, a small unopened bag of cookies, a tin of tuna, change for the blind, when actually she would like a glass of Pinotage.

She is the youngest in our family, and probably the child we fear the most.

Hands down she would beat Connor and Georgia in a bare hands fist fight.

I think Connor and Georgia have realised arguing with her is pointless because if she does not get what she wants, then odds are she will kick you in the groin.  On the up side she says “kick you” very clearly, so we do praise her every time with “well done Isabelle” – I sense we might be sending a mixed message.

Monday is her birthday.  Her birthday is overshadowed every year as Georgia has her birthday on the 20th, and we do a combined party – but only with Georgia’s friends.  I am not sure Isabelle has realised she has not had a birthday since she arrived, but she is not saying, so we are taking that as a non-issue.

This year I was planning to send cake to school and maybe organise a face painter or something.  But instead (because I can’t get a face painter) I have decided that I will spend the day with her.

Have a Isabelle Day.

I will send her to school in the morning with cake, so she can still celebrate a bit with her friends, and then I will collect her at 12h00 and we can head out and do a nice lunch and find a play area.

She can then walk around Toys R Us and choose a present for herself – maybe stop at a wine estate, I think she will like that.  I think once she has gone to Toys R Us, I will be such a hero, I could probably take her to a three hour reading of Moby Dick, and I will still be a hero!

The one benefit of working for myself – if we discount the risk of financial insolvency, and the constant nagging sensation that maybe you really need to spend more time on bizcommunity and get yourself a damn job – is that I can take off a few hours and spend it with Isabelle on her birthday, and do not have to fill in a pile of paperwork, nor weasel up to my boss with tears in my eyes.

Cool that!  Happy Isabelle Day on Monday (and happy David D’Aguiar Day on Monday as well!!).

I had Georgia’s party this weekend at Bugz Playpark – the downside is that you cannot bring anything to the venue, the upside is that you cannot bring anything to the venue …. the result is you have nothing to stress about, as the elves take care of all the bits and pieces on your behalf.

Totally winner winner chicken dinner stuff.

You tick a few things off on your list, and then you give them Kennith’s credit card, and then you enjoy the day.

The rest is taken care of.

The only thing I had to do on the day was go and collect the cake, the remainder of the day was pretty much easy sailing.  Of course about an hour before the party I start to feel that manic feeling that overcomes me when ever I am hosting/attending a party {social phobia much?}

I arrived at Bugz Playpark, and everything was set up.  The food was better than I anticipated.  They made party packs, there was cooldrink, there was Smarties and Jelly Beans.  The venue looked really sweet (I have not used Bugz Playpark inside venue before)

There was really absolutely nothing for me to do, other than stand around and appear useless.

The party hostess set up, she fetched things if I asked, she put everything out, she face painted, she cleaned up … bless her cotton socks.

In keeping with my love of birthday parties and RSVP’s, there were two moms who cancelled on the day as thier girls were sick, and there was one child who arrived who had not RSVP’d … but I took this all in my stride.  Honestly I did.

My cousin decided on the last moment to come through with her three kids, and all I did was ask the friendly and efficient hostess to add an additional party pack – sorted!!

I would like to tell you how good I was that I did not stress out, and that I did not swear and cuss, but I do have a small confession, I had Mommy’s Little Party Helper in the form of a beta-blocker.

Basically medication that supresses your body’s reaction to anxiety and stress.  You still feel anxious and stressed, but you do not break out in sweat, your heart does not race, and your breathing does not become rapid and shallow (all three standard for me) so I stood around being cool and calm, no matter what was happening.

I realise it is an absolute “cheat” but right now I admit that there are a lot of things I cannot handle, and any bit of assistance I can get, I take.  {I have a very limited supply of the beta-blockers so have enough for 5 events/functions/stressful situations where I feel I need a Get Out of Jail Free Card}

It was a great party, the kids ran around and had fun.  We actually ended up not having time to even cut the cake.  I also do not think anyone could have fitted any cake in – there was just too much food for both adults and children.

I loved when the one little girl said: “This is the BEST party I have ever been to, EVER!”

Bless her.  The cheque is in the mail.

It really was a good, easy party – and other than the RSVP thang, everything else was all quite lovely.

Happy almost Birthday Georgia!

{Georgia’s birthday is on the 20th of June and her and I are going to have a spa afternoon after I collect her from school.  Can you say bliss?}

Random photos from the day, I actually forgot my camera at home, so we had a use a mik-and-druk camera}

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