Mike calculated that our birthdays would add up to 100 this year: Lucy turned 9 last Tuesday, Mike is already 47, and I'll be 44 in December. Somehow (and don't ask if he took leap years into consideration) Mike worked out that our 100th would fall on Sunday 17th July. So we had a big party in a local beer garden, and nearly 60 people came to it. Cool, eh? And there was lots of cake. Add to that the cakes I'd made very quickly to take to a friend's 50th that morning.
On Tuesday, Lucy needed more cake to take for her classmates, because now it was her actual birthday. So I pressed a box into her hands containing 26 muffins to take up to her classroom. But so that she'd have something to cut into and eat for birthday tea that afternoon, I made another cake. We ate that once she'd had a cuddle with Tommi, the knitted giraffe, and a good clamber over her new indoor climbing frame.
Friday was the day of her birthday party which, because the weather was so rotten, ended up not being a treasure hunt on bikes as planned, but a trip to the cinema instead. And before we went, there was of course: cake.
What we've realised this week is that you can have as much cake as you like, and still eat it, even if you've just had two braces fitted (like poor Lucy).
