Mugs and Spiderman Invites

What a day.

Swimming this morning - had to entice Ben for the first time in a year and a half: he was too excited and wanted to go to Zach's birthday party straight away! But, convinced that it was this afternoon we went to their swimming lessons where Charley protested vocally against being cold and tired, and Ben had a great lesson despite us losing his goggles somewhere in the house.

Home via the shops for Ben to choose a birthday present for Zach (and for Charley to have a sleep at last), check invitation to find to my horror that the party was this morning not this afternoon!! I was upset because I had been looking forward to doing facepainting there, but I was more worried about telling Ben that we'd missed it! In the end we didn't tell him ;-) we arranged to pop round to deliver the present, not telling Ben that it wasn't the actual party; and ended up staying all afternoon, eating some of the (blummin' incredible) pirate ship cake that Di had crafted, and then staying while the kids had tea together! The afternoon was even better because Ede also popped round with his family - they'd made the same mistake as us!! Really annoyed though because I forgot my phone and didn't even think to take the camera, so no photos at all of anything :( So you get this instead!

Charley has learnt a new skill. He can now stand completely unaided. He did it yesterday at Steph's house, standing for 10 seconds or so, but today he's been standing unaided totally solidly for up to a minute or more as he plays with things on a table in front of him, not leaning on it or anything. Very impressive.

I just hope that he doesn't start doing it on waking in the night. So far, every new trick he's learnt, he's ended up doing on autopilot on waking at night. Rolling, getting up onto all fours, sitting, crawling, pulling himself to standing - he wakes and starts crying for us and we find him in all sorts of positions on our bed. He's only fallen off once thankfully but that was actually when I was lying next to him! (Steve reacted faster than me, I was still coming round, dragged out of a deep sleep, when Charley was replaced next to me!)

Now I'm hoping that the boys settle properly to sleep so I can get on with a few bits of work this evening. Exciting discussing collaborations with a rather fabulous jewellery artist so now I have to get cracking on some artwork to send her asap, and I also need to get Ben's own birthday invitations printed to give out tomorrow! Then of course there's the mugs which I'm slowly finishing. Thank goodness I've found my mojo. It's always disconcerting when it takes leave!