Pearl took out five books.  As she took them out, the librarian smiled and said, “That should keep you going for the afternoon.”

Then her friend’s mum saw the small pile of books and said, “How long will it take you to read those – until tomorrow?”

Then we bumped into one of the school teachers at the supermarket on the way home, and she grinned and said, “Don’t finish them all before you get home!”

…And that is why we’ll probably be back at the library tomorrow!

(For the record, I think she has finished one and is half-way through a second, but I could be wrong – it might be her third).

© UpsideBackwards 2012.

The funds we raise will go to the NZ Cancer Society, to support cancer patients, survivors, and their families.

If you know us, and would like to sponsor us, you can donate here: Relay For Life.  If you don’t know us but would still like to donate, feel free!  Where it says “choose a team”, just pick one you like the sound of – the donations all go to the same place and that’s the important thing.

Other things you can do:

- join a team in your local relay – it’s a world-wide effort

- donate to your local Cancer Society

- think of a friend who has been touched by cancer (everyone knows someone), and send them a card telling them you love them.

This is a cause dear to my heart, and I’ll be blogging about it a bit in the coming months.

Celebrate, Remember, Fight Back!

© UpsideBackwards 2012.

Here is Pearl’s handiwork from the craft classes the other day.  She was keen to do some more crochet, so took her (my!) hook and yarn along.  The flowers are made of loops of chain stitch.  She has also made a necklace and some bracelets.

The two “rose” brooches are made by folding circles of fabric into quarters and sewing them together.

She had a great day, and has since been busy making necklaces and bracelets for all her friends!

© UpsideBackwards 2012.

Fainjin and Pearl went to a badge-making and sewing class today.  Here are Fainjin’s efforts.  I’m told the dinosaurs are a tyrannosaurus rex and a brachiosaurus, but I have to confess I’m not sure which is which.

The two fire-engines are incredibly cute, and the bee on the flower was made especially for Babess, who was delighted and honoured and insisted on wearing it for the rest of the day.

At the top of the picture you can just see the edge of the “glasses case” (drawstring bag) that he did in the sewing class in the afternoon.  He was a bit worried about the sewing – this morning he said to me, “But Mummy, my stitches are all too big…”.  However, he has done really well, and I don’t think his stitches are big at all!

© UpsideBackwards 2012.

This evening, Babess asked me, “What are we doing tomorrow, Mummy?”

“Daddy will take you to creche,” I answered, “and I’ll take the other kids to their school holiday programme so they can make cool stuff for us.”

Fainjin looked up.  “You mean the big kids, eh, Mum?”

Yes, Fainjin.  The split has changed. We used to have one big kid and two littles; now it seems we have two bigs and one little.

© UpsideBackwards 2012.

Since seeing the film, she has been very interested in early films, particularly those by Georges Melies, and has been looking them up online.  They are usually only a few minutes or even seconds long, so she watches them over and over.

I am very tempted to show her Forgotten Silver, just to see how far the hoax goes with her…   I remember watching it the night it first screened, being fascinated and excited and incredulous and slowly, slowly, skeptical until by the end I was howling with laughter and appreciating the joke.  I was a fair bit older than 9, mind.  And there were plenty of people who didn’t realise it was a hoax until they read it in the paper the next morning.

Perhaps I will warn her that it’s not true at the start, lest she be too disappointed.  But I think she would enjoy it all the same.

© UpsideBackwards 2012.

“But when’s your party?” asked Babess, puzzled.  “If it’s your birthday, you have a party.  You have to.”

I explained that The Dad and I were going out for dinner, and that would be my party.  She wasn’t very happy about it, but I pointed out she was still getting cake, and she grudgingly admitted that it could still be my birthday even if there wasn’t an actual party.

“What number are you?” Fainjin wanted to know.  I sighed to myself, knowing that “my number” will be gleefully repeated to all and sundry for days to come.

“Forty,” I told him.

“Forty!” he crowed.  “And before that, you were three-ty…”

Pearl corrected him, “Thir-ty, Fainjin, not three-ty.”

“Thirty, forty,” he said.

“No,” she was not sparing my ego at all, “thirty, then thirty-one, thirty-two…”

I smiled a little ruefully.  What a lot of numbers.

How lucky I am, to have had so many.  I smiled again, less ruefully and more gratefully.  Thanks for the reminder, kids.

© UpsideBackwards 2012.

She’s a scientist, and a mum like me – her younger boy and my Fainjin were born just a few days apart.  She seemed like a kindred spirit, although I only knew her through her blog posts.  She was sick, but fighting hard, and she got better for a while and I celebrated for her and her family.

When I started my own blog, I wasn’t sure of the etiquette about linking up, and I write her an email to ask her permission.  She was very sweet to me, so welcoming, and even sent a tweet to her followers asking them to welcome me too.

But she’s like that.  Sweet, and generous, and open.

Our friendship grew, through comments on each other’s blogs, and emails and twitter, and finally last year we got to meet.

I had suspected that, given the chance, we would be firm friends, the sort who could chat a morning away over a cup of tea, talking about everything and nothing, enjoying each other’s company unreservedly.

And I was right.  We clicked.  There were no awkward moments, it was like we had known each other forever.  When it was time to go, we realised we would miss each other – and we’d only “known” each other for a couple of hours.  Except that we knew each other pretty well online for quite a while before that.

Susan is a writer, a mentor, an advocate.  She is a wonderful mother, perhaps the most present parent I have ever known.  She is funny and caring and kind.  She has taught me an awful lot, in ways she doesn’t know even know about – and more than likely in ways that I haven’t recognised myself yet.  If I had to choose one word to describe her, it would be grace.  She lives a life enveloped in that beautiful quality.

Susan is in hospice care now, at home.  She is surrounded by the love of her family and friends, and the hundreds or thousands of people whose lives she has touched through her writing.

If you’d like to add a message of love, please leave her a comment here.

Susan, dear friend, thank you.  For all of it.  The science, the kinship, the laughter, and even the tears.  This is not goodbye, I know you’re not ready for goodbyes yet.  I certainly am not!  But it is another beginning, another chapter.  May hospice bring you relief and comfort, and more good times with your lovely husband and children.

Much love,

Kate.

© UpsideBackwards 2012.

I understand they were well-behaved and slept well, settling easily at nights (having big cousins reading several stories in bed helped, I’m sure).

But when it was time to come home, they were less than enthusiastic.

“I don’t want to go home,” said Babess, doing her sad face.

“But Mummy and Daddy will miss you!” replied Auntie B.

“They won’t miss me if I stay here five nights,” Babess asserted.

“How many nights have you had already?”

“Three!”

“So how many more would you want?”

“Five more.”  Babess is already adept at manipulating numbers to her own ends.

“Oh, they would miss you.”

“No, they won’t miss me.  But I will miss the trampoline…”

So nice to know where we come in the ranks of her affection!

© UpsideBackwards 2012.

They have been very excited and looking forward to it, and I’m told they have been very good this evening and have enjoyed having their older cousins teach them dances and read stories to them.

This afternoon, when The Fabulous Auntie B came to pick them up, one of the cousins scooped up Babess and said excitedly, “Do you know where you’re going?!”

Babess widened her eyes and said “Yes!  I’m gon’ stay at your house for threeeeeeee” – she held up three fingers – “… minutes!”

© UpsideBackwards 2012.