Letting off steam...

.Thats very bad jane. I think they assume our lives are over. Oh well it may happen to them one day.

That's really sad! However, it's even worse when people invite grandparents on holiday specifically so that they can babysit the small children. Without telling them. Offering to do it for one night is one thing, but I have had friends who have had a huge shock when finding themselves expected to babysit three families of DC's children every night when on holiday in a group of barns in Cornwall. It was simply assumed that they would all be in bed by 9pm and wouldn't want to go out for a drink or a meal.

Yes you are right. We get on well with ours too but don't have much in common as DH says.

Luckily we get on well with ours (SIL was grownup when he was born, I think, and gets on well with DH), but when they are with their friends we leave them to it, even though their friends are always lovely to us. The conversation seems to enter a different zone!

Thank you rose - yes it was wonderful to see my DGD dancing. You are probably right. I've never been one for cliques. If ever I say to my DH 'I wish we spent more time with our DH and SIL' he always says 'Why? We have nothing in common'.

at least you got to see her dancing

Let them be cliquey, you would probably be bored anyway; sometimes the conversation of the younger generation is like a foreign language when they are together.

Thank you for the sympathy and hugs everyone! It was fine. My DGD was so fantastic in the show that I concentrated on that. There is a 'clique' in the dance school my DGD attends and DH and I aren't part of it. My DD's friend owns the school and she is the leader of the said clique, so I assume it is up to her who is invited. She is a nice enough girl. They have lots of outings and stuff but never ask us. It's a bit hurtful but I've got myself into such a state over it in the past that I have to let it go. I need to stop harping on about it on here. There are more important things to worry about.

Yes Eiegran lots of twins, tripets, quads, etc. You can always Google it. I think 67 survived to adulthood.

My problem is (apart from the obvious!) I'd never remember their names. As it is I call Mr Aka but the dogs' names, or the GC, etc not that he ever notices.

St Catherine of Siena was the 23rd child of her mother. Her mother outlived her too. Tough old birds they were, those who survived all that!

Tell your friend thanks from me, roseq

I always buy myself a birthday present from me to me too. Started that about twenty years ago.

I bought myself presents after miscarriages as well. One was a Caithness paperweight. Somehow it helps to look at it on the odd occasion when...

"A friend said recently that perhaps mums should have a present on DC's birthdays"

Brilliant idea! On it like a bonnet! [any excuse]

I often have to go through all of my six grand children's names before I get to the youngest one. I would have been there all day trying to call the last of 69 children.

The 69 must have been in batches, or she would have had to start at 11 and keep going until she was . . .I can't do the maths, but it would be an unlikely age (I won't say impossible - nothing is impossible.)

Is she still having them...as we speak?

No it's 69 children.

Isn't the record for number of children born o one woman about 64? A Russian I think.

I think in those days the older ones looked after the younger ones - and they would probably have left home by about 14.

Hurray for contraception is all I can say!
Imagine being pregnant or breastfeeding and coping without modern conveniences for all that time, probably in a very small house.

The person who told you it ws impossible sounds like the person who told me I must be mistaken about the seventeen children born to my gt gt gt grandmother. I proved that it was true - the first was born when she was just 18, the seventeenth when she was 45, almost twentyeight years later. That is an average gap of about I year 7 months between them - better timing than some women who had a baby a year.

I told someone once that my great-aunt was born in 1853 and they said that that was impossible. But it is true.
Doesn't time fly!

I wasn't exactly an early starter - I was 26.

Which reminds me - next month I shall have been around for three quarters of a century. Doesn't time fly?

Elegran my DS will be 50 next year, you are not alone

We were late starters, elegran.

What young DDs some of you have. My DD1 wil be fifty next year!! I can't believe it!