My baby Max turned four this week.

Here is he with his big sister and little cousin in beautiful Kangaroo Valley. It's been lovely for the boys to have their cousins visit. All of them have had a wonderful time playing and running crazy together.

Can you believe that this beautiful child weighed 10lb10oz when he was born? I still haven't forgotten that day...

Max loves a girl from our church who is 17. The other day I heard him pick up his toy mobile phone.

"Hello? Sally? This is Max." he said. And then he started to sing.

"Na, na, na, na, you are the music in the me!"

One day he'll have his love returned to him...

The other day we were talking about people's ages. I asked him, "Do you think I'm old?" 

"Yes," he said.

"Well, to you I'm old, but to Poppa, I'm really young," I explained.

"How old is Poppa?" he wanted to know.

"88!" I said.

"Wow - that's expensive," he exclaimed.

Of course that meant that the boys had to wait around for two hours instead of the 3/4 hour I had originally planned for. I couldn't take them home because AP was out with the car, so we had to stay. By the time the poetry began both boys were at the end of their tether and I was wondering how we were going to manage.

My life often feels like a series of unplanned gambles. I had no way of knowing that we would be out for two hours. We could have gone home, but I really wanted JJ to have the opportunity to be part of a poetry reading, and I didn't want to do what I have had to do SO often in the past and miss seeing her because I had to look after the boys.

Thankfully, the poetry was held in the pavillion next to the park. The boys and I headed to the park, having dropped JJ in the pavillion with my promise to return somehow. Amazingly I saw a friend in there who was waiting to be picked up in half an hour, so she watched the boys play while I went in and saw my beautiful girl perform a gorgeous poem. 

Sadly, she was beaten by a seven year old with a long and vocabulary-rich epic about lizards, but she did well and her teachers and I were very proud of her.

And I was proud of the boys, who also were resilient to the end, even though they didn't particularly want to be there.

"I won't need it. As long as I do the shopping first, we'll be fine. Where would I go anyway?" I said as he drove away.

An hour later he rang me with the news that he also had my wallet. I had left it in the car and it was on its way to Sydney.

"Well, I definitely won't be going anywhere," I laughed.

Ha.

Everything was going well until last night when I put the dog to bed about 10pm. The only trouble was, he couldn't walk! He collapsed on his back legs and I had to carry him downstairs. He ended up being able to walk a few steps, but he wasn't keen and he looked ill.

I worried all night that he would be dead in the morning and I would be responsible! Thankfully he made it through to the morning, so I rang the vet at 8am.

"It's probably a tick bite," he said. "You'd better bring him in this morning. It can't wait. It's serious."

Great. Seriously sick dog. No car. Two small boys and a daughter who still has to get to school. Oh, and no money to pay the vet!

It worked out alright in the end. The vet is sending me the bill, the daughter was grown up enough to walk across the road on her own, the boys coped fine and we borrowed a car from a lovely lady up the street. And the dog stayed overnight at the vet.

So then we went to playgroup, and invited one of the mums and her two little girls back for lunch. We mums had a wonderful relaxing chat because the children were playing so very quietly and nicely upstairs. Spreading lip gloss all over their hair.

(In case you're wondering, lip gloss is not water based. It does not just wash out in the bath with shampoo. And it is very, very sticky. I tried a couple of solutions, including vinegar and WD40 before finally getting it out with serious amounts of vegetable oil followed by a hefty dose of shampoo. That took most of the afternoon.)

But that was after the next animal crisis. When my friends were about to go, Max got excited about showing his little mates our pet rats. The trouble was, that he knocked the very heavy cage over and hurt one of the rats. He brought it in, practically in a coma. "Mum! It's hurt it's head!"

So now I was saying goodbye to friends while reviving one quickly expiring rat and trying to work out how to keep the other two from escaping their knocked over cage.

Sadly, I think Maxie the rat may not be long for this world. She came to alright with my rehydrating solution of water, salt and sugar (every person brought up in the third world knows how to mix a rehydrating solution) but she seems to be a bit of a paraplegic. 

And then I rang the vet. It's not a tick bite. It may be arthritis. Or a heart condition. Or something else. 

So the afternoon has been spent looking up ideas for removing oil based lip gloss from hair, hugging sad children and droppering medicinal solutions down a rat's  throat. 

All in a day's work.

'What a great thing to say!' I thought. 'How cute and serious for his age.' 

"Will you be a people or an animal doctor?" I asked, trying to string out this concept as far as it could go.

"Actually, I'm going to be a purple mermaid with purple hair," he said. "Mum, do you want to be a red one?"

The best thing was that the children all helped. And I mean all the children. Even Bright Eyes was excited about it and fetched and carried for me with no protests. He was like a miracle boy!

We laid the fire and bought marshmallows. I got the boys to help me count out the marshmallows into a bowl and choose sticks. Then they helped me put the candles on the cake.

At dinner time, Bright Eyes carried in the bowl and gave out sticks to everyone. Max and JJ carried in the meals to the lounge room, and we had marshmallows and birthday dinner together very happily. 

Bright Eyes said grace very coherently and then we all had a discussion about what we liked about daddy. 

Max: "I like playing upstairs in my room with him."

Bright Eyes: "I like playing with Daddy. He's a good player. Why do you like Dad, Mum?"

It was really beautiful and we had such fun together. This is such a joy compared to the traumatic mealtimes we so often have.

Afterwards the children helped clear and bring in the cake, and then we had sparklers outside.

Fantastic! Happy Birthday dear husband! May you live at least another 37 years.

"We're going to sleep all night and be good boys," Bright Eyes is saying. "Come on Max. You can have a dry night. Let's sleep together."

Max is saying, "I'm getting a nappy."

And Bright Eyes is heading for his dad's bed saying, "Come on Max, we'll both go in Dad's bed. We'll be a double boy in a dad bed."