Birthday Boy

The Boy Wonder turned three today, but had a reduced family party compared with last year's, because G's parents are currently in Covid quarantine. The Boy was quite badly under the weather himself, and so was I, and therefore it was a rather subdued affair, though this didn't really matter because he had a proper party yesterday, at a play centre ("Wiv TWO Hoovers!" he told me, holding up two fat fingers), attended by some actual friends.

He was pleased to see R and me, once he'd shifted enough of his attention away from the important washing up he was doing when we arrived to actually notice we were there, and more pleased to see that we'd brought presents. Though he showed no interest at all in the out-of-print Alfie Treasury I'd lovingly sourced second-hand (despite me offering several times to read one of the stories to him), he did like the new coat we gave him, and loved the magnetic rods and balls building set, which occupied most of us for most of the day. It was fascinating to watch him learning the basic principle of magnetism in real time, and it was heartening so see the levels of concentration and persistence he brought to the task of constructing whatever shape he'd chosen to make.

The best Boyism of the day came as he was handing round bowls of crisps, to keep everyone going while we waited for the delicious curry banquet his parents had ordered to be delivered. He'd been offering the bowls so that people could help themselves, but when he arrived at R he held out a single crisp towards him. R reached to take it, but B shook his head. "Straight in the mouth," he said, opening his own to demonstrate, and popping the crisp into R's when he followed suit. I was in stitches, and R was charmed. I hope it's this moment he remembers from today, rather than the massive meltdown to which he was subjected a couple of hours later, after taking a bite out of his own piece of B's birthday cake. "I WANTED THAT BIT!!!" sobbed the Birthday Boy. "GIVE IT BACK!!!" "Granddad can't give it back," I roared over the hubbub, "because it's already in his tummy!" "I WANT IT OUT OF HIS TUMMY!" howled Mr Reasonable. "GET IT OUT AND GIVE IT BACK!! NOW!!!"

And... breathe....

This evening I realised that I still had one left of this year's hundred extra images, and as many other people are doing at the moment I decided to create a Best Nine collage of my most popular Instagram photos of 2023. There are any number of sites you can use for this kind of project, but Adobe Express, which used to be pretty good for quick collages, isn't any longer, and some of the other sites look a bit dodgy. Luckily techradar came to my aid by recommending Fotojet, and I created the attached collage free of charge, and downloaded it several times at varying resolutions for different uses, in just a few minutes. Most, if not all, of the photos were posted here as well, but it's quite interesting to see which have especially appealed to my Insta followers.

On which note, I'll say goodbye to 2023, and wish you all a happy, healthy, and creative New Year. See you in 2024!