Vooomm …….what was that?

Could someone please tell me where the time goes?

No seriously, it’s the 2nd of June, we're approaching the longest day of the year and the days are about to start getting shorter for crying out loud!

As a colleague said the other day, Christmas was only last week and we’re already getting ready to turn the clocks forward!!

Well, another week whizzes past, the weekend is here and what have we done?

Ma famille went back to the farm where we picked our strawberries last weekend and picked ……………. another 3 kilos of bloody strawberries! After we swore we’d never eat another one! Apparently my mum wanted to go with them and Joseph was more than happy to oblige.

And so, after a fairly late breakfast this morning (topped with strawberries and accompanied by side bowls of strawberries), we got Joseph ready for another birthday party; a pirate themed one.

Thanks to his own pirate themed party last year, we had his outfit all ready to go, so off he and I went to a small hall near to where we live, after he had established (as he usually does), that I would be staying for the duration. It was the party of a friend of Joseph’s from nursery, his parents had done a lovely job of “pirating” the hall, food, delivered pizza, wine for parents and so on.

Watching Joseph interact however, made my heart ache.

In my view, he is a very sociable boy, very friendly, very happy, but sometimes, it all seems ………… I don’t know, a bit too much. I’m looking straight at him, smiling all the time in case he looks over, giving him a nod to let him know all is well, but sometimes, as today, his look over at me lingers a little longer than I would like and a small shake of the head lets me know something is wrong.

His face tries to be strong but in the same way he walked towards me when he was struggling with breakfast club late last year, he does the same frown now. I adopt my “aghast” face, my “how can you miss out on this fun” face and it just does the trick; he turns about and joins in again. I don’t know what was up though.

Watching him afterwards is the tough bit. Whatever it was that made him want to walk away has obviously been pushed to the back of his mind. Maybe it was nothing. Maybe he just didn’t like the game being played; who knows. I'm pretty sure it was nothing serious though.

A little later, they were sat in a circle playing a new game, by which time another child, a girl who had also been at nursery with him (over a year ago) had arrived and Joseph had recognised her.

I could see him looking at her as she sat next to him although she appeared not to notice. Thankfully, they were just in earshot.

He said, “You used to go to my nursery”.

She glanced at him but looked back to the birthday boy’s mother who was explaining the rules of the new game.

He continued, “we went to the same nursery together”, trying to jog her memory.

This time she turned to look at him properly but, failing to recognise him, turned her attention once again back to the game.

Realising she wasn’t going to acknowledge him, he said, “But I can’t remember your name”, and he too looked back at the game.

There are many times that my children make me want to get up, run across to wherever they are and hug them and this was most definitely one of them but unfortunately, there are situations when it’s not really appropriate.

This being one of them.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; having smashing children really is just about the best thing that you can have.

Nothing else comes close.

Nothing.