Juggling, in extremis

Nathan's birthday party was craaaaaaayzeeee. 14 four year olds (mainly boys) in our very small living room, plus most of their parents, too. Next year, the local soft play centre it is. It was however very, very nice to see placid, low maintenance, non-attention-seeking Nath, the quiet and gentle and slightly dopey one of our three, taking centre stage and even enjoying it in his own little way. Have to admit, was slightly embarassed by his guest greeting manner (airplaning down the hall, yelling at the top of his voice, 'PRESENT!', yanking the front door open and snatching the present from each unsuspecting guest's grip before running back down the hall and into the living room without so much as a 'hello', 'how are you?' or 'come in'. Hmm, maybe not so quiet). Still, he made up for it later by joining in the party games (after a bit of persuasion), NOT crying when someone else won the pass-the-parcel, and, importantly, RECOGNISING WHAT HIS CAKE WAS SUPPOSED TO BE - YIPPPEEEEEE! So, yes, the cake worked out okay, and with the indoor sparklers going for the jet engines it really looked quite spectacular. Most importantly, Nathie loved it.

But here, you can judge for yourselves:



The day I wrote my last post, as I laboured over this cake and hoped against hope that Nath wouldn't take one look at it and say, 'Err, what is it, Mum?' I had to laugh at the Extreme Sport that is Working Motherhood. Here I was, sticking bits of Victoria Sponge together with jam, licking a bit too much of the icing off the spoon, and wondering whether I'd got the gun metal silver effects right on the Fighter Jet Wings, when only 48 hours before I'd been stepping off the red eye from New York where I'd been at the annual TOC conference speaking to an audience of 1000 people about 'The Future of Publishing'. (See embarassing pics, here).

With all this flipping between such frankly silly extremes, it's a wonder we don't get more mixed up and confused than we already are, and no surprise that so many of us develop a bad case of Imposter Syndrome. I can't work out whether I think I'm more of an Imposter-Future-Gazer or Imposter-Mother, but I'm probably a bit of both.