Birthday disaster

For someone who is usually incredibly good at being romantic and creative, my husband managed to forget my birthday. No breakfast in bed. No card from my husband. No card from my daughter. Not even a 'happy birthday, darling!' in the morning. Nope.

(In his defense, he did have a wonderfully romantic evening planned, but as I have flu, earlier in the week we agreed to postpone it. However, that does not mean postpone the WHOLE birthday...)

Oupa popped over to wish me, which was lovely. Except that Nellie thought he was coming to spend the morning with her at home (she has NOT wanted to go to nursery AT ALL this week, and every morning has included a traumatic farewell to Mommy that has gutted me) and play until Mommy came home. Upon discovering that this was not the case, her world fell apart.

She refused to get into the car, so Mommy had to carry a kicking and screaming child to the car and strap her in. Then she cried all the way to nursery, and refused to get out. So Mommy had to carry her in to the nursery. Then she refused to let go, so the teachers there had to help me physically pull her from me. And all the way back to the car I could hear her screaming at the TOP of her lungs for me. It was so awful, I sat and cried in the car. I came close to going back in to fetch her, take her home and ring the school to say I was too sick to come in. I did ring the nursery school when I got to work, which I've never done before, to check whether she was ok. She was settling down, I was told, which made me feel even more ill. (She's never taken that long to settle down after I've left her.)

Then, (a very small thing, but in the light of how my day had gone, it became a big thing), my birthday was not announced in the staffroom. And those who did know it was my birthday, did not stand up and say anything as the meeting ended either.

I did start to receive lots of lovely text messages, but because my phone was broken, I couldn't reply. So I sat there thinking that all those who sms'd me would now be thinking how rude I was.

Finally, the work I had thought would only take an hour, took me about 4. So instead of being able to fetch Nellie early and spend lots of time with her in the afternoon to make up for the horrible morning we'd both had, I could only fetch her at about 4pm... which made me feel even worse - a failure as a mother.

But once we did get home, things improved dramatically. My guilt-ridden husband had bought me a bunch of beautiful red roses and Lindt chocolates. My baby girl and I played together on the trampoline and had a lot of fun. When we then dropped Nellie off at my in-laws, they had a lovely present waiting for me (a worm farm!! Yay!) When we got home, a friend I hadn't seen in WEEKS popped over for a lovely visit. And then we got to go to the movies AND I GOT TO PICK THE FILM! (99% of the time Graeme chooses the movie, and his choices are always good, which is why I let him, but it's nice being able to choose from time to time.)

It was a great film - Body of Lies. Very violent in parts, and the ending wasn't quite as dramatic as I would have liked, but all round a very good film that raises a lot of questions about how we see the world.

And this morning, when we went to Nellie's concert, she and Grandma had made me a wonderful card! Even better than a shop bought one!

So all in all, it was a good birthday, even though it started disastrously.