There’s no point crying over spilt milk is a phrase that has been on a loop in my head for the past ten days. For a couple of weeks now things have been breaking all round the house. Irreparably breaking. From one moment to the next. Without warning. 

• First to go was the mixer. My beloved red mixer that I’ve had longer than I’ve been a wife or mother. It wasn’t the steadiest of mixers and I usually stood it on the kitchen floor when using it because it tended to hop about the place. For some reason, last Sunday I lifted it onto the countertop and set it going with a yeast dough. I turned my back to get a loaf tin from the kitchen cabinet and heard a massive bang. The poor mixer had wobbled off the edge and split in two.
  

•  A couple of days later the laptop, my second most-prised possession after the mixer, froze and died. The electronics in the hard drive have just stopped working. 
• The external hard drive, which we rarely used, turns out to be broken too. So we’ve no backup files. Well done us! All that is left is for us to scour the house for old phones and search Facebook and sent e-mails for photos we sent over the last couple of years. 
• The kitchen tap started leaking and needed to be completely replaced. We spent well over a week without water in the kitchen. Thank goodness we have a downstairs bathroom and a dishwasher neither of which were affected by the kitchen tap problem. On the plus side, not just being able to turn on the kitchen tap to rinse something or fill the kettle gave me a renewed appreciation for how good we have it in this part of the world. 
• In the midst of all of this Number 3 had to go for his 6 month check up. All went well till the doctor thought she felt a lump in his abdomen and sent us for an ultrasound. My only thought was “Oh God, don’t let him be broken too”. The following day the ultrasound was performed and we got the all clear. The lump appears to have been poo! 

Annoying as it is to have to replace devices and to lose photos, to have to traipse to the bathroom for water and to hand-knead bread, none of these things is a real problem. They are all completely insignificant compared with the possibility of something being wrong with your child.  So when I actually did spill some milk this morning at breakfast, I had to smile to myself. Rather than being irritated that there was a mess to be cleaned up, I was happy that we have more milk in the fridge and water to wipe the mess up with as well as three healthy children, well able to create a mess in the first place.