This is going waaaay back to July now but it being such a crazy Summer I never did have a chance to blog about it properly. Our lovely eldest boy, Gabriel turned  4 years old on 4th July and had a wonderful day. He woke up early and found his bed full of balloons which I’d placed there during the night and followed a trail of “Happy Birthday sprinkles” (confetti) to the living room…

….where his presents were waiting, including THE present from Mummy and Daddy, his first bike!

It was a bit big for him and he needed stabilisers and a helmet (which we took him to buy later) but his face says it all:

After he’d opened the rest of his presents he put his birthday t-shirt on ready for his first ever visit into his new Reception class at Holy Trinity C of E Primary School, NW3 at 10 am.

We all traipsed across the road, me, Daddy, Gabs & Luci to the school, regretting that we wouldn’t be living so close to school for long. The meeting for parents was predictably dull, but Gabi’s hour in the classroom was great. The room was full of books, toys, building things, art supplies and a special outdoor area just for the Reception class with painted wood, a huge blackboard, water and sand pits and lavender and other plants. I loved the feeling of the school, really small and friendly and all the kids behaving nicely. Unfortunately Gabs failed to ask where the toilet was and came home with wet pants but he otherwise absolutely loved it.

So we took him for a haircut next, which doesn’t sound like much of a birthday treat but is one of his favourite things to do, visiting “Barber John” at Buccheri’s (a real old-fashioned candy-striped pole-type barber shop under the bridge at Golders Green station.) Gabs thinks very highly of Barber John and really listens to him and loves the whole sitting in the chair with the cloak on thing and he gets to take a lollypop from the cupboard after. John has four kids of his own so is very used to cutting little ones’ hair.  A trip to the barbers is tantamount to a treat.

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Daddy disappeared off for a walk after and to run some errands. We’d only been home about a minute, when he called to say “Jump in the car and come to see a house!” (You might remember we’d just found out two days earlier that we had to move out of our flat.) So I shoved them back in the car, drove up the Finchley Road 5 minutes and arrived at a big house with steps up to the front door. It was all a bit sudden and unexpected, but for some reason as I walked up those steps to enter the house a loud voice in my inner ear said, “You’d better keep an open mind and like it because you’re going to be living here.” And like it I did. You can probably see why:

After we returned home we went to the playground to eat the sushi one of Daddy’s violin students had bought for Gabs (she’s Japanese and knows Gabs is forever asking me if we can go for “some sushis”) and play. I felt so emotional knowing we wouldn’t be playing on this street, where we’d lived for 6 years, much longer.

And so ended my Gabi’s 4th birthday, a pretty monumental day for all of us.