Birthdays, cake and autism

Today was our youngest girl's 10th birthday - double digits already, how did that happen?!

Today we collected this most amazing creation by a wonderful friend of mine called Debs who runs her own business making all sorts of fabulous cakes (check them out on the Debs' Dream Cakes page).

How amazing is this?! At the start of this week Sasha had drawn a very specific picture of what she wanted, as shown below:

That's Kirby and Jigglypuff kissing on top - her idea was that it would be a pretend wedding cake, with her two favourite characters (Nintendo and Pokemon, for the less initiated amongst you!). 

Some of you will know that I do like to make cakes myself, and have made most of the girls birthday cakes over the years - sometimes to quite specific briefs, as this one was. Sadly I've been hit by the dreaded flu lurgy this week and I suddenly realised I just wasn't going to be able to attempt anything - so I can't tell you how welcome it was when lovely Debs suggested that she may be able to help me out (and do a much better job than I would have done, but sssshhh!). Please do go check out her Facebook page at Debs Dream Cakes and give her a like or two on my behalf. Small businesses always need and deserve a lot of support.

We spent the morning at school sports day (I know, on her birthday, what bad timing was that?!) where Sasha was not at all interested in taking part in the sports. Thanks to very understanding staff at her school, with flexible attitudes, Sasha was able to take part in the way she chose herself. She decided she would like to be a motivational person for the team who was coming last. She did add a little extra role, which was to shop anybody who was cheating, but let's try and gloss over that...

So anyway, for the first half an hour she ran up and down the pitch alongside those doing the sack race and then the relay race - honestly, she ran much more than she would have done had she been taking part in one of the teams! However it did mean that she 'peaked' quite early as it was a warm day and the heat was a bit much for her... cue a trip home to relax and check out all the birthday presents again.

Those ten years since Sasha was born have gone by in a flash, and of course have been nothing like I expected them to be. Not that I knew what to expect exactly, except maybe a second little girl who would follow the same kind of pathway as our first... I had no idea. I'll leave that reminiscing for another blog post though - I'll just leave you with the link to the very first post I wrote over 7 years ago, after an autism diagnosis was suggested....  Today, a diagnosis of autism?