Now I am 6

Birthday girl blowing out candles for the gazillionith time at her gazillionith party. Or so it felt. Which is no bad thing as we were determined that Anna's 6th birthday would be a special day for her and not, "oh yeah, I remember, wasn't that when Jackson had mumps?" So, in the spirit of that, Anna first...

A very excited girl bounded around this morning as we ended the week as we had started it with birthday pancakes for breakfast and present opening. As Anna had her official party a couple of weeks ago as she was sharing it with a friend in her class we somehow agreed that she could have a few friends over for birthday tea and cakes after school today.

Then the original plan was that A's godmam and daughter would head over with some other friends for yet more cake and a glass of fizz / OJ. However, this was the point where A's birthday plans and J's suspected mumps had to coincide and we moved venue to the friends' house and just me and A headed up there armed with pizza, fizz, cake and balloons for a very pleasant start to the evening.

J's story is less exciting. Face more swollen this morning and pain worse so headed off to the GP who said, well possibly/probably mumps but we can only know by testing and we have to contact the HPA to see if they want to do that. GP called later to say that HPA would send us a testing kit (see tomorrow's exciting blip for more on that) and that he should be isolated for 7 days from the first symptoms. Needless to say with half-term starting this weekend he was not the happiest I have ever seen him. Step one was to banish him upstairs and ban the visiting party girls from going upstairs for the duration of Anna's birthday tea. Oddly after this being allowed downstairs was enough of a treat to make him smile. And being sent home a fabulous care package by our friends full of cool DVDs and books and get well cards made him even happier.

A very disrupted and distracted day and not at all what we had planned, especially as we were due to have a very busy weekend including visitors and it seems the most notable feature of a notifiable disease is the amount of time-consuming notifying you have to do.

But nothing distracted from Anna having a very special day so I'll end on the most important thing - wishing my funny daughter a very happy birthday xx

Lesley x