Maddie and I were awake before 7, ready to party. Micah and Toby joined us around 7:30, at which point I’d starting hanging more banners. Gradually other family members drifted down, until at 8:30 I decided enough was enough, teen or no teen, we were waking the birthday girl. So I bravely sent Theo and Micah in to do it for me.

Theo’s favourite bedtime story lately has been the vintage edition of Topsy and Tim’s Baby Brother, where the family adopt a new baby boy. This is only the explanation I can give for why he decided to wake Megan up by announcing loudly (and completely falsely) ‘We’re going to have a new baby brother!’ To which she looked very excited, and I had to quickly explain that no, that’s not the case. Then received an interrogation from Megan and Theo as to why we couldn’t or wouldn’t be providing them with a new sibling. I felt like all birthday presents we had to offer were somehow going to be a disappointment after that kind of wake up.

Thankfully the hammock distracted them from the topic and we moved seamlessly into present opening without further ado. I take a lot of photos, and I occasionally get grief from my family over it. But I love looking back at the birthdays over the years, and seeing what they were into at that time. At 14, with a hammock from us and a beanbag chair from my mum, alongside the sofa moving fiasco of the last couple of weeks, there definitely seems to be a theme of lounging! Harry Potter still features, and this year One Direction and Taron Egerton were new additions to current interests.

We did our best with a lockdown substitute for McDonald’s breakfast, with sausage and egg muffins, hash browns and milkshakes. McLurker’s didn’t do too badly at all on their opening day.

There were definitely pros to a lockdown birthday in regards to loosening the homeschool reigns for today. The birthday girl just did what needed to be completed today, and then made the most of the sunshine. And employing younger siblings to swing the hammock for her.

However it wasn’t that easy to find activities to replace a 14 year old’s birthday plans, that, let’s face it, would not have featured siblings and parents high on the guest list. So we opted for splitting into two teams and doing a photo scavenger hunt around the estate. It took a good half an hour to establish suitable team members, working out what would be a good dynamic and fair on the responsible parent, whilst taking preferences into account.

Basically we realised we weren’t going to please everyone. So we allotted the teams anyway, and headed off. Most things were not too hard to find, and friends were obliging at having a socially distanced photograph taken. But it turned out there wasn’t a cat to be seen on the whole estate.

So we got home and improvised to claim our win. The other team reckoned it was a draw, but we got back first so I choose to believe we won.

It turns out the cat thing got a bit out of hand however. In hindsight that may not have been the wisest thing to teach them. 14 years in and still achieving parenting fails on a daily basis!

Cookie dough was the other theme to feature highly in this year’s birthday gift and food requests, so this was a Cookie Dough frosted chocolate cake. It went down well, but we’ve got a second cake coming tomorrow for birthday number two, and even we might not manage that amount of cake in isolation. If you’re local and random cake parcels appear on your doorstep, ask no questions, just eat up.

Family zoom time happened to help celebrate, with a particularly disjointed rendition of happy birthday, and sufficiently awkward conversations between the teens, their cousins, aunties and grandparents. This was followed by a driveway visit from Nanny, and another aunty and cousin. It’s lovely to see everyone and the efforts people will go to to still show their love on birthdays.

Dinner was Dominos, as per the birthday girl’s request, and I’m always happy to not cook for a night. Then it was time to settle the younger ones before getting ready for Maddie’s birthday and then settling down with the big kids for Megan’s film choice of Eddie the Eagle.

It was a late night and they were just heading for bed when the girls suddenly decided it was a good night to start questioning when they could have their phones in their room at night. My heart sank. The last thing you want on a birthday is to end with an argument, but we weren’t going to be making that kind of decision on a whim either. The comical point came when one child who wasn’t happy with the decision decided to set a 3am alarm to go off in our bedroom in revenge. Only they then had an attack of conscience, cancelled it, and lay on my lap despairing over their guilt and wishing they’d gone through with it. Which made us all laugh. We finished the night with hugs, and I prayed a silent and tired thank you for managing to maintain a peaceful end to a happy day.

Birthdays are fun and exhausting too. And they often involve all kinds of emotions and sugar highs and tiredness and jealousy from other siblings, and strange feelings for them and us over different children’s stories and the whole complex dynamic of a birth you weren’t present at. So as much as I love celebrating I’m weary too, and praying that Maddie’s birthday tomorrow brings more happiness than tricky moments, more laughter than tears, more joy than battles. I love these verses someone sent me the other day from Isaiah, reminding me of the gentle Shepherd who’s with us on the rollercoaster of parenting:

‘He will tend his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms; he will carry them in his bosom, and gently lead those that are with young.’ – Isaiah 40:11

Tonight I’m resting in His arms, gaining the strength to open my arms wide again for my children tomorrow.