Noah’s 8th Birthday

This post is late. By two months.

The reason being that myself and my beautiful little family have been in newborn baby bliss. Our new human has been all any of us have wanted to talk about. We have all been occupied with falling in love a million times over in that time. With that new baby smell, the cute noises, the first smiles and laughs… It has been all kinds of amazing.

I fall hard for my kids. They sweep this mama off of her feet on the daily. It’s probably another reason why this post is so late too. The writing I could do, no problem… It was a beautiful day. Full of celebrations for my handsome eight year old, Noah (p.s. how am I a mama to an eight year old, it’s crazy and heartbreaking all at the same time?) Of course with great celebrations comes the chance to whip out my big girl camera and snap away. Trying to capture the moments, the smiles, the fun… The times that are a little out of the ordinary… The times that I simply have to remember.

By the way, when I say snap away, what I really mean is… click, click, click whether you are smiling, ready, on your best side or not… And hey, say ‘cheeeese! Most of what I take is blurry, out of focus, badly framed…but in the roll somewhere are ‘The Ones’ that say it all, if you get what I mean. Also… please don’t for one second think that the blurry one’s are discarded… oh no… they are always sent to clog up the space on my hard drive for me to look at ‘one day’. It hurts me to delete any photograph’s of those I love, even if you have to squint to make out who is in the picture. Because I know who it is… #photographhoarder

Anyway, I digress.. My point actually is, that I take a lot of photographs and it takes a lot of time and attention to find those particular ‘Ones’… And I haven’t had the time and attention to do my search justice… Until now.

Noah’s birthday was on Sunday 2nd July 2017 and it was a hot, sunny day. Perfect for a BBQ. Noah asked for one so that he could spend his birthday with his nearest and dearest. He has an old soul sometimes. He definitely understands the importance of family, which I love about him. He played with his sister in the morning, mainly with the balloons which we had set out the night before… Like we do for every birthday. He was excited about his remote control car though, he was itching to play with that. It was his main gift and not one that he had asked for… or even expressed that he would like. The problem is, nowadays it’s all about Xbox, playstation and video games galore. I refer to them as calculators in a bid to be funny with my kids (cheap laughs). Don’t get me wrong, Noah and Ellenah do play with these things… Their Papa is techno mad… but I don’t like it that much. I want them to use their imaginations and to get lost in play. Is it mean that when Noah asked me for a Nintendo Switch, I kind of said ‘not a chance’ in the nicest way that I could? I felt guilty about it. For saying no to the thing that Noah wanted for his birthday. I felt like I was crushing his dreams for a while. So, Matt and I had to up our game and come up with something that could compete with the calculator (ha!) that he wanted.

He loved his car. Loved the tyre marks that it left on our garden. It went fast at 25 mph. It had the number eight on it, like his age. It was bright and cool. He felt cool when he opened it… A little grown up. Especially when we told him that we chose it from a model shop and that Daddy wanted one. It flew down our garden, nearly taking my legs out from under me at one point. Noah had fun chasing after it. Making a tunnel with his legs as his Papa drove it through them. He thought it was great, chasing his little sister with it. We chose well. He wasn’t sad that he wasn’t opening up ‘something different’. He was more than happy with that, his little book of things to make with sticks and all of the other gifts that he was lucky to receive.

Matt and I busied ourselves in the kitchen and the garden, getting everything ready. It was hot, I was heavily pregnant and uncomfortable, so it wasn’t easy. Noah was only turning eight once though and I was determined to make sure that he would have an awesome birthday, one to remember. Especially after he had requested that his baby brother would arrive in time to be at his party. I somehow felt guilty for that too, guilty that he hadn’t. Like it was within my control or something.

There was a a lot of food, plenty to drink and all of the smiles.

We had a lovely afternoon. Noah played with his sister (who had a curl in her hair for the day and a pretty dress on) and with his cousins and lapped up all of the attention from those who love him. He played with his Nerf Guns and Light Sabre’s… The girls played with the sand pit when they were doing the latter though.

Us grown-up’s ate, talked, laughed and listened to music while we sat together on the grass. We enjoyed being in the sunshine (I sat myself in the shade for the most part, struggling to cope well in the heat) but it was just nice hanging out together. It was lovely watching the children play together without having to check the clock too much, without having to tell them ‘no’ every two minutes and without being occupied with every day life.

I set out to give Noah a lovely birthday. It mattered to me because I was conscious about his baby brother being overdue and a lot of attention was being directed at that long awaited life event. I didn’t want him to feel overlooked. Noah was my first born child. He was the boy who showed me what unconditional love was and is. He is so very special to me and he deserved the effort, a million times over.

For next year, I have agreed that we will discuss the idea of him having a party of some description with his friends from school… and a homemade birthday cake because I have never made him one myself. I must have found myself on a high from him having a lovely birthday, knowing that he was happy. I say this because next year, I will be planning his baby brother’s 1st birthday which will be two days later. My boys are going to have me sliding into July 2018 with my to-do lists firmly in my hand and an overwhelmed look on my face.

Seeing how happy Noah was on his birthday this year though, it will be well and truly worth it.

With Love,

Ria  x