Birthday Things is a Big Girl Now!

Today, my other baby, Birthday Things, turned two! It started out with a bang. Or-- more like, an alarm. As it turns out, the sound of glass breaking and the sound of Mary Bullock shrieking TINKERBELL, DADDY! TINKERBELL! are strikingly similar to the noise sensors on our alarm system. What could I do except laugh and facebook it so everyone else could laugh with me? And pour more coffee, of course?

Welcome to life in our house. Admission requirement: sense of humor.

I didn't set out to make this blog about my family necessarily, but WOW they give me so much to work with. There are few dull moments around here.

I hope you know that there are Things I Hate in this life, but OH! the Birthday Things are so much sweeter for the contrast.

Thank you for reading, for laughing, for celebrating, for commiserating, for encouraging.
For everything.

Well Played

You probably can't possibly imagine this about me, even tempered as I appear to be, but when I was little, I used to give my mom fits. FITS!

Basically, she couldn't take me anywhere. By that I mean, she couldn't take me anywhere without risking having to remove me kicking and screaming. As much as I'd love to tell you that it was all toddler hysteria, it wasn't. I actually remember some of the fits I threw, so I couldn't have been that young. One involved telling her I hated her in the middle of JC Penney.

I know! TERRIBLE!

My mother always told me my antics would come back to me. By the time I had babies, though, the advent of online shopping had me fairly confident that if the time ever came when MB should need physical restraint in the toy aisle at Target, her box of coal could come just as handily from an online merchant such as Amazon.

I can do damage on Amazon.

As it turns out, I underestimated my mother's determination to see me suffer for the tantrums of my youth. In fact, her revenge plot quietly began last time I was home to visit. See, she gave Mary Bullock a gift-- a gift which re-appeared from the bottom of the toy bin sometime last week and became her new favorite thing.

Don't be fooled. It looks like a harmless recorder, but it is a human torture device. Especially when she wants to get the band together at 6:30am.

Well done, Mama. You played the long game, and you won.

Another thing I do...

When it's way too early for wine, but my patience has run out. I watch videos of MB being cute*.

Y'all, I love my baby. But I am so sick of poop. Thinking about it, waiting for it to happen [in the potty], bargaining, bribing, trying to act like it's no big deal [IT IS A BIG DEAL! IT IS! IT IS!].

I even bought MB some new Tinkerbell BGPs yesterday, and y'all know I am wary of anything coming close to the big P[rincess]. So far today the result has been...nothing.

Keep us in your prayers. I know poop might be a silly thing to pray about, but I've got nothing else up my sleeve.

*She's saying Aurora Borealis. She's not a genius [except maybe the evil kind], she just watches too much TV and learns ridiculous words that make me giggle. That, and the nose picking. It's wrong to giggle about that, though right? It won't be funny in a few weeks. Dear Lord, while you're solving my poop problem, could you also not make my baby the class nose picker? Amen.

Welcome to Bobo's Stroller Body Shop

Didn't even need to make a wish

So, my birthday was awesome. So awesome, in fact, it's taken me a few days to wrap my head around actually posting about it.

Last year, if you'll remember, wasn't so hot. I was pretty pregnant, Lee had to work, Mary Bullock ingested Bengay, poison control, blah-d-blah.

Up until last Wednesday afternoon, I was bracing myself for another sad birthday. Lee was in trial in Tallahassee and was supposed to be gone until late Friday night. I had to resist the urge to stamp my foot about that one. Don't judges consider attorneys' wives' birthdays? Ugh.

But I didn't stamp my foot. I waved goodbye to him on Sunday night [ok, I might have pressed my face to the kitchen window and thought seriously about crying] and decided to have a great birthday no matter what. I even planned my own birthday breakfast.

And for this supreme and rare pulling up of my own big girl panties, I was rewarded handsomely. Lee surprised me Wednesday afternoon by calling me from our driveway [trial was done early]. He had re-booked our previously postponed overnight trip the beach, and surprise! he even gave me my birthday present early. And it was thoughtful. And pretty. And had nothing to do with running, cooking, ironing, or children.

And God Bless his parents, who kept the babies and are probably still recovering.

All of my birthday wishes had come true before I even got home to my cake on Sunday, which was probably better because MB helped blow out my candles and it took us several huffs and puffs.

Now I just need to figure out how to keep the glow of these Birthday Things alive till 34!

Did you know

So, you know that I'm a twin, right? If you know me or have been reading, this is old news. But did you know that I was also a surprise?

On this day, thirty-three years ago, my mother, nearly two weeks overdue with what she thought was her third baby, finally went into labor. She got to the hospital around 7, and forty-six minutes later, the girl that she'd hoped and prayed for was born.

That was my sister.

And then I popped out [maybe she wouldn't describe it as popped. Or maybe she would. She has the convenient tendency to only remember the good stuff. Which has worked out really well for her memory of my teenage years].

But I digress.

SURPRISE! I must have been thinking in my tiny baby head. BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR!

Then she set about getting a second of every baby item she had [can you imagine?] before bringing us home from the hospital.

Later, I thanked her for all of this by acting like a total brat between the ages of 3-10. And then again between the ages of 15-18. I definitely had some bratty years in my twenties.

Even now when she doesn't answer the phone by my second time trying I have been known to get huffy. And how old am I?

Oh yes. Thirty-three.

So Happy Birthday, Sister! Thanks for sharing.

And Happy Twin Day to my mother. Thanks for rising to the challenge, and for always making me feel like you preferred it that way, even in my bratty years.

ABC Book

At this point, I should probably edit MB's ABC book to make P stand for PROCRASTINATE. First I procrastinated on finding the pictures [Q and I were hard for me, and I didn't want to pose any pictures just for the book.]. Then I procrastinated on getting prints made. And then, just when I was admitting to myself that this project might go the way of my wedding scrapbook, sad and neglected, I realized I could do the whole thing very handily on Shutterfly. And I realized I already had Q and I pictures-- I just had to search back through the blog to find them.  Within one nap time, it was done! [We won't talk about the laundry and dishes that certainly did not get done.]

And then I got it in the mail, did a little dance, and procrastinated on writing this post.

Better late than never?

It only took...18 months to complete. At this rate, I guess I better go ahead and get started on LDWIV's ABC book. He'll still need this when he's five, right?


[Edit: I wish I could take credit for this idea, but I got it from here-- so so long ago!]