It’s my birthday, it’s my birthday and I’m going to party like it’s my birthday! Well, I’m not exactly going to party seeing as I have a ten and a half month old baby, but I did go to a Harvester for my tea last night so I could claim my free birthday ice-cream sundae, and tonight Barry’s going to get me a Krispy Creme donut on his way home from work. Oh and I had a glass of wine last night too, so you know I’m living the high life right here!

In all honesty I’m really not that bothered about birthdays these days. I still can’t believe that I’m nearer to 40 than I am to 30. I still forget how old I am quite regularly and have been doing since I was about 25. In fact I honest to goodness thought I was 26 for two years and got a massive shock when I realised I was turning 28 not 27 (again!). I don’t feel old (I know I’m not actually old!) and most of my friends are around the same age as me. I really don’t think age is important, as long as you can do what you want to do, who cares how old you are? Although since I started rehearsals for Aida (the musical I’m going to be in in October) I have been feeling my age somewhat, as half the other dancers are girls literally 20 years younger than me!

The only other time recently that I have considered my age was after I first met Barry and we talked about getting married and having kids. I was 32 when we met (and he was 31 – he’s just over 3 months younger than me). We knew quite early in our relationship that it was serious and that we wanted children. And that was the time I was aware that we should probably get on with if we did, especially if we wanted more than one child. The thing with trying for a baby is that no-one knows how long it might take, so we didn’t want to leave it too long before we started trying.  And so we got engaged just under a year after we met, got married a year after that, and four months later started trying. As it happened I got pregnant in two months but we didn’t know that was going to happen, it could have taken years for all we knew! My mum was almost 36 when she had me and she’s never seemed ‘old’ to me even though she was older than a lot of my friends’ mums. I always said I wanted to have kids before I got to 36 too, and I did it! (Although if you’d have asked me four years ago if I thought it would happen I never would have believed you).

So there we are, I’m 36 years old. Happy Birthday to me! And Happy Birthday to my brother for tomorrow too – he’s exactly two years older than me, my mum and dad planned to have their kids two years apart but I don’t think they thought they would get it that close – and actually we were supposed to be about three weeks apart but he was early and I was late and we ended up with birthdays right next to each other. When we were little he used to open his presents on my birthday because he couldn’t understand how my birthday could be first if he was older than me (and he got away with that one until he was about 13 and I started arguing that if he was opening his presents a day early then I would too!). Happy Birthday our kid!

(The photo is from my 30th birthday in case you were wondering – I couldn’t find one from a more recent birthday!)