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| Easter Sunday, George and I |
Yesterday was my 42nd birthday. I don’t mind telling people my age, most of the time. When I was pregnant, perhaps I did a bit. But I’m getting a bit more comfortable being an old momma. It’s becoming fashionable.
It’s hard to feel like an old woman when you have an infant. As long as I avoid the mirror which shows off my gray hair and wrinkles, I can pretend I’m just 38 – my birthday age when Mary was an infant – or even 28 – my birthday age when Fritz was an infant.
Raise your hand if you’ve had a baby in your 20’s and your 30’s and your 40’s.
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| 9 people really isn’t that many |
My birthday presents reflect how much things have changed in 14 years, and how much things have not changed.
I received, for probably the 30th year in a row, a handmade birthday card from my brother, Glenn, who has Down Syndrome. He turned 43 sixteen days before my birthday. We are almost Irish twins. His cards are fairly identical from year to year. Happy Happy Day…Happy Birthday Day…Happy Good Day…I love you, Michelle. I love you, too, Glenn.
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| My husband, what a cutie |
I also received, from my husband, a covered casserole dish set. One of the dishes replaces one broken by George when he opened the cabinet door and pulled it down on our unforgiving tile floor. Fourteen years of parenting inquisitive babies and it still takes a minor disaster to get me to start baby-proofing the house. My husband also promised me a new paper towel holder, broken by an older child replacing the roll. I don’t know who or how, but I was very thankful. It’s gotten dingy and I’ve seen many others I liked better…but I’m not one to replace a perfectly useful gadget “just because.” So my birthdays and Christmases are occasions to replace the things my kids have destroyed.
My parents came into town and treated all of us to a baseball game, Tampa vs. Cleveland, where we did not root, root, root for the home team, which did win, and it was a shame. It brought back memories of many times we did root for the home team in Cleveland, and they didn’t win then either.
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| The boys |
But unlike even 5 years ago, I also received 4 additional homemade cards, a cardboard pyramid with hieroglyphics on each face spelling out a personal message (Katie), a hand-embroidered bookmark (Katie), and an entire 30-something page book entitled “I Love You Because You’re You” written and illustrated by Jenny.
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| The girls |
In the afternoon, while the sleep-deprived kids (from the late baseball game) were vegging in front of the TV and the baby went down for a nap, I slipped out of the house for a pedicure, my birthday present to myself. I came back an hour later, baby still sleeping, older kids oblivious to the fact that I ever left. The girls, though, noticed my toes immediately. Pedi-vision – like “spider-sense” for girls. I did not normally get pedicures 5 or 10 years ago. It’s this southern living and beach crawling that has changed me.
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| My favorite people in the whole world |
Today, we’re back to school. Some of us have only 8 weeks left. Some of us have 10. Today’s math lesson was: if there are 32 weeks in the curriculum, and you take 8 weeks off for summer, 1 week off for Thanksgiving, 2 weeks off for Christmas, and 2 weeks off for Easter, how many weeks do you waste by procrastinating and not doing your work in a timely fashion? We do this exact same math problem every single year, right about this time, and they still have not learned their lesson well.
Thanks to everybody who sent birthday wishes. Facebook is good for some things! It really is nice when your email is full of happy happy day greetings.
Reit This Way 